The agѐd key turned reluctantly in its hidden chamber, A shriek! as of lifeless fingernails scraping, A chuck! as metal strikes metal in its secret place. The key, complaining removed, silently pocketed, Metal wrapped in past-spun cobs’ webs on living flesh; Push! but the door, spirited, resists his entry, Tartarus weighing heavily upon the heavenly portal. Shouldered it yields; harrowed dust falling in a veil, The casts of deadened forms littering his tweeded shoulders As life defeats death - a howl! of agony, Long-sealed door in ages-past browned-rust, groaned - Now enters the victorious living man; An inrush of new air brushes his skin, hair raising, Breathing life again into the darkened unmoving tombs’ Past by-gones struck by the first light’s new entry, Seizing the long-staged stones’ hiddennesses. The door’s refusal, barring entry to its Sheol, The final painful bout between flesh-and-blood with Long decayed corruption; until, inevitably, Enough, just enough, ground, is gained For the man who enters in. A first in long ages of generations passing, slow passing: They lie dead, entombed in their uncommon temple of past belief; A snuff - mummia? - now inhaled, a choking, A catching of breath, coughing spit onto the dust-hallowed flags. A house of a god? Long now unknown, forgotten today, Encased and encasing his eerie irrelevance; Was he alive here - entempled, enthroned? This house even now reserved for his once-deity, Surrounded by silent subjects in eternal patient expectation. Still, into this corrupted land of disregarded reverence A starlight daily enters, slowly, lighting worshipping motes into heavenly animation, Its radiance gleaming on, in and through; Casting living paint carefully upon waiting walls: Vermillion, aquamarine, gold, amber, scarlet, emerald, azure. All bound into a living white, in purity undyed, exciting the dead Space, in this space, in all Space; A unity of ephemeral mortality with divine immensity. One man, alone, alive, Standing now in the breach betwixt what was, and is, and forever Willing these dead - a still silent audience - to live again.
notes:
Tartarus was a god of the dead
Sheol is the land of the dead
mummia was a medicine made from powdered Egyptian mummies