The Graves of Mishgath-Tera

Weeds gave the graves away. Where the dead

of Middle and Late Kingdom Mishgath-Tera were buried,

the usual straggling gray-green blades

surrounded oblong patches of deeper green

with deeper roots where once the earth

had been gouged out, jumbled, and pushed back in.

Used through the reign of Ulisek, we think.

Not much to go on—no wig-helmet

of beaten gold, showing hair in a topknot

and fine whorl-tucks of ears; no myths

in cartoon panels, lapis and mother-of-pearl;

not even cylinder seals.

In a covered bowl, a residue of lentils.

In a sealed jar, the stain of sesame wine.

Green blobs mark where objects of bronze were laid;

things made of silver left a purple dust.

Clay cores, almost featureless,

were images of tutelary gods.

Teeth but no bones remain of bodies

whose children vowed to remember them forever.

Crumbs of offering-vessels litter the surface.

This is what we are granted,

something, never enough, as always,

our questions answered with questions.

The scribe of Mishgath-Tera whose twelve teeth

are now in a plastic bag labeled 15-04

carried his share of grief and ritual jugs.

He knew that “forever” as a unit of measure

impresses only the living.

He recorded names:

For every descendant of the first clay mixed

with dragon blood, he wrote a name

on a plain clay tablet at the birth,

and sometimes a new name later. Marriage

and other transactions required more tablets.

And when a body was wrapped in its mat

and the grave-diggers made their deep mark in the dirt,

the scribe took his seat, bending his neck

as the name in its inhabitant-form

was dictated for the last time. He wrote,

tipping the stylus in his fingers,

barely moving his lips, and that writing

was sealed in folded clay, which was

imprinted in its turn and permanently

added to the majestic accumulation

of the city archive, represented today

by this right angle, shaded by weeds,

these two nubbins of wall.