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     Museum of Egyptian Antiquities, Cairo

After they liquefied the brain
and rivered it through the nose,
     after they perfumed and wrapped
the body at the opening-the-mouth
     ceremony, the pharaoh stepped
     into his new bodiless life.

Things of the body remained:
offerings of figs, a golden goose head,
     a stone version of himself
so he could one day re-enter
     and have a face to look out from.
     But a pharaoh who cannot move

cannot touch a horse’s mane,
the queen’s breast, his ruling scepter.
     He watched the Theban
builders lazing on bricks,
     his second life
     a one-way mirror.

When his mummy was moved
to Cairo, he floated, untethered
     without it, wafting up
the Nile like a hot air balloon.
     Then he found his painted
     eyes staring up at him,

gold body dulled by glass. Rejoined,
he looked up at the faces staring in,
     chewing gum, year after year,
until the millions flooded the streets,
     linking hands around him,
     coughing in tear gas clouds.