Working For The Pyramid Poem by Richard Cole

Whipped like rocks, we're all Egyptians
working for death, for the pure idea
of numbers, tonnage tricked
and heaved up muddy slopes, our own bodies
the soft engines of increase – spirit-shells
boxed shoulder to shoulder and leashed to a dream
of freedom greater than labor, labor stronger than pride.

With pride, then, we assume the soft
collars of subordination securing our lives.
We believe in a pyramid, in rank and ordered truth,
in an elevation of command more faithful
than all our cults and mild ambitions.

Stamped and soothed at night with exhaustion,
we lie awake in the cool desert winds,
dreaming of a monument finished,
radiant in its massiveness,
with distant lights wavering at the top
where unseen leaders travel through the dark
like beautiful insects, shaping the future,
and over us all, the logical moon,
constant and airless, where lesser souls,
becoming shadows on earth, will someday shine.