A piece of Egypt
On 28 July 2006 I attended the Met Museum in New York and saw the Dendur Complex and was puzzled a little by all of the explorers names graphed into it.
L Polite had scrawled his name across the wall
in 1812 he let me know,
as if it Dendur was a suburban train,
to say simply he had been here.
The sandstone complex had been rebuilt
piece by piece to escape the rising Aswan.
It had a cast of gliphs
or tags as you may say,
from J Livingston and Belmore JA in January 1818,
Devoti and Jason in 1816,
and F O Irgis at no particular era,
telling of their arrival in the middle
of a Nubia desert.
Do not forget A L Corry RN,
peace, who in 1817,
was here too, with the RN posse.
But diss them all,
for slashing the work of the Egypt.
For the heiroglyphs harder to see
than these tagger’s names is what I came
to the middle of New York to read.
But I forgot my dictorary
and so instead am illiterate
to my ancestor’s true word.
Add your comment
You need to login or signup to add your comment to this work.