What happens when man becomes the measure of all things? As a college freshman I tried to answer this question in the following poem.
If, in some time they find me here,
In not a sarcophogus, not a tomb of Tutenkhamen--
where he sleeps
Within a stone star shining his breaths eternal. Next to
gold and silver lilies, to cat-eyed jewels
and crafted coffers. In his hands a scepter,
upon his head a diadem
But dinched in a dark chair
thick with attic dust,
next to my desk, sodden with years,
and littered with pencils, poetic pieces
and an imitation scarab in resin.
Wedged in my hand a pen (stale as dry water)
and upon my head the dust of immortality.
In Tut’s tomb, in Egypt's stomach cool
Where history's fed his royal blood, and
mummy shrouds,
leave no evidence
no goodness nor godship
but just the oldness of dirt and death
And yet not different
my corpse toils
in the muddy banks unknown.
The rags of no splendor rusted;
upon my bones, the scarab shimmering
words of dust, in a universe that never wakes
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