When you can’t afford
to renew the lease on your grave
and your hollowed-out carcass
has nowhere else to die the rest of its death
do not forget
your soul still hibernates elsewhere,
pinpoint-poised
in a hexagonal sarcophagus filled
with imperishable honey,
damp-proof
against the contagions of history.
So dream therein of the morning
when the ’comb dissolves in sacred saliva
upon the gracious sweet tongue of Osiris
and you are set at liberty
into the sticky slow-pouring genius
of deep time.
