Marc Antony Contemplates an Egyptian Frieze by Patricia Nelson

This pigment on a wall does not explain the queen,  

nor does it paint the knowledge of her gods  

who make the desert blow and ripple.  

It just sets forth the colors  

that the sighted beasts may use  

to think about them. 

Its flatness fastens us as shadows  

to the slanted forms that walk across a wall  

with shapes of nightmares on their heads. 

Do they imply the kind of love they wish for?  

A sideways locomotion or that jolt  

of falling where one enters a dream? 

Perhaps our own shapes change   

when the gods who move the desert   

think of us.  

Or perhaps they only rustle in their dark  

when we cast shadows on them   

with our looking.    

And then walk on without us, 

a river of strange, calm shapes.  

---

Patricia Nelson is a former attorney who has worked with the "Activist" group of poets in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her new book, Monster Monologues, is due out from Fernwood Press this year.