Mummy

David Park Barnitz

Thou art at last made perfect; from the estate
Of mushy life Death hath thee petrified.
The soft the flowing and the putrified
That made thee up, is by that artist great

Now crystalliz'd unto a changeless state.
That thing thou walkedst, nos'd and ear'd and eyed,
Eternally severely doth abide,
Sunk from the bands of them that drank and ate.

Green mummies walk above thy walled gloom,
Unripen'd mummies; they intemperate
Seek in life's beauty their high-crowned doom

In vain. But thee no passion doth illume
Stiff in the musked darkness of the tomb
Hard in stiff bands of red and nacarat.