Carter's Descent
(February 1924)
To come down these sixteen steps
holding the keys, the sole keys,
and hearing the reverberation from
that heavy iron grille; to know
that not even the Times correspondent
can follow me here . . .
To come down
and enter the darkness and to see
through the darkness a cracked lid
still suspended above that
most public, most secret mask, not
shaped to reflect either the lunacy
of a heretic predecessor or a star-
blind sacerdotage, but to glow
below the horizon of the sun-disc
modestly--no papyri, no press! . . .
To come down where everyone has appeared
to understand why their hands must be tied,
their heads bowed, their tongues slit--
why everything (chariot, ostrich feather
fan, mere child's toy) must be restrung
along my endless, exact, but unbreakable lines. . .
To come down where I have felt
alive and in command as if
it had been my own kingdom and I
liberated from fake courtesies
(permission denied/permission granted),
gilded wooden minds, hollow talkers . . .
To come down and handle a reed basket
of three thousand years ago, and forget
the three thousand unanswered letters
in my identical basket--
"Surely you must be
our long lost cousin from Camberwell . . .?
Might this perhaps cast light on the crisis
in the Congo. . .? Just send me a gold bar
or two--some mummy cloth--some of the beer
dregs--a grain of sand--I enclose half
a crown . . ."
To come down
to where the responsibility and the doubt
do not hang on their frayed ropes
like halves of that granite lid
cracked by a priest's
...
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