Tutankhamun Poem by Tom Billsborough
Tutankhamun
Anubis calls and predators stir.
The jackals raise their heads and cry
And penetrate the desert air
Across the mauve horizon.
And soon the carrion of goats
Will be the carcasses of boats
A sea has jettisoned.
You stare as grains of sand
Pour through your hands
As time yawns in waves of sound
across your yellow lands,
Where winds reshape the dunes
And build you castles of security.
Anubis calls. The jackals cry.
The predator's astir within your being.
Your bones now crack the silence,
Boy King, Tutankhamun,
Your doom the price of incest.
This poem has not been translated into any other language yet.
I would like to translate this poem
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4/29/2024 2:07:25 PM # 1.0.0.1119
I like your serious poems- -they make me use my brain cells [exercise is good for them, you know]. I figured Anubis was a god but that was all my brain cell delivered so I loped off to Google.... ahem, class is in session... Anubis is the Egyptian god of mummification and the afterlife as well as the patron god of lost souls and the helpless. He is one of the oldest gods of Egypt, who most likely developed from the earlier (and much older) jackal god Wepwawet with whom he is often confused.- - thank you, Google. Now that I see which one it is- -it is the god with a jackal head- - I can really get into the poem here. Anubis calls. The jackals cry. The predator's astir within your being. Your bones now crack the silence, Boy King, Tutankhamun, Your doom the price of incest. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - that is an image to shiver my bones, Tom. When you write a serious piece, none can do it better As time yawns in waves of sound across your yellow lands, Where winds reshape the dunes And build you castles of security. Anubis calls. The jackals cry. The predator's astir within your being.- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - every image building on the next until I can hardly breathe because it is all so ominous and threatening and it keeps getting more ominous and more threatening and smells of evil. 10+++++++++++++++++++++ and into my Fav List [[wish they had a fav of the fav list]] You can write a wicked poem, Tom, one that would make Poe jealous.
You have a lot of brain to exercise, Clever Susan! Just to clarify one point. The bones in the desert point to the weakness within Tutankhamun's own bone frailty caused by the incest used to retain power with in family. It is thought he died from a fall caused by bone weakness in his legs, Egypt's external world was secure, the deserts acting as a barrier to invasion, by contrast and, as as I know they were never invaded. But the need to retain the enormous wealth they accumulated led to that policy of incest which ultimately led to the tragically early death of Tutankhaamun. I was brought up on Poe's stories as a child and I still think he was the best writer of that genre. Vincent Price's portrayal of the Dance of the Red Death will stay in my memory for ever and that ironic feeling of destruction from within in a supposedly secure environment may well have subconsciuosly influenced my poem. I can never get Eliot out of my head and Edgar Allan Poe is another permanent squatter in my mind!