SHAFT TOMB

SHAFT TOMB, by Ann K. Schwader

 

 

In far Saqqara, countless faithful wait

Upon their earthly gods who fared ahead

As Westerners beyond the judgment gate,

Emerging justified. These patient dead

Partake unknowing of a power old

As moonlight on the desert.  And as cold.

 

Stacked in like coffined cordwood ages deep,

Such blessed ones enclosed in gold & hope

Cannot suspect how transient their sleep

May be.  Though sheltered safe beyond the scope

Of jackals & the like, each night betrays

Their resting place to some who shun the day.

 

Intent on plunder, chaos-hearted men

Descend through shadows darker than they know

& deeper.  These shall not see Re again,

But scatter their unworthy dust below

Where Geb’s primeval bones lie hollowed through

By entities not good for life to view.

 

Before the gods of Egypt first appeared

To mortal minds, this black land lay beneath

The sway of other masters.  Ageless, feared,

& nameless in all earthly tongues, they wreathed

The stars themselves with their mephitic breath,

Transforming midnight to a fane of death.

 

What walked — or crept — across the cringing earth

In those strange aeons cannot be expressed

Outside of nightmare.  Primal matter birthed

Atrocities, until the ground, oppressed

Past bearing, gaped upon a greater void

& destination for these twice-destroyed.

 

The Name of Re prevailed, then.  Wholesome light

Dispelled all shadows bred of Isfet, sent

What cast them crawling downward.  Yet their blight

Seeped through in dreams: each priestly monument

To Ammut or Apophis bears some mark

Of elder menace exiled to the dark.

 

The best lies deepest.  So the legends tell,

& heretics believe, who scavenge past

A hundred shattered afterlives to quell

Their godless greed.  Emerging in a vast

Necropolis of archways, they unseal

What must remain sequestered.  Unrevealed . . .

 

In far Saqqara, where the desert drifts

Above a certain shaft-tomb lost to time;

Men mutter, as the twilight shadows shift,

Of curses  —  not suspecting there are crimes

Which carry in themselves a justice worse

& swifter than the strike of any curse.

 

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Ann K. Schwader’s ninth poetry collection. Unquiet Stars, was published earlier in 2021 from Weird House Press. Arm is a two-time Bram Stoker Award Finalist, and has received Rhysling Awards for both short and long form work. She was named an Science Fiction & Fantasy Poetry Association Grand Master in 2019. A Wyoming native, she now lives & writes in suburban Colorado. Find out more at http://www.schwader.net/

 

Simon Walpole has been drawing for as long as he can remember and is fortunate to spend his freetime working as an illustrator. He primarily use pencils, pens and markers and use a bit of digital for tweaking. As well as doing interior illustrations for various publishing formats he has also drawn a lot of maps for novels. his work can be found at his website HandDrawnHeroes.