Exposed Mummy

Ripped from the seclusion of his painted coffin,
And his priest’s wrappings
That guard his soul from harm,
He lies in shriveled nakedness under a slab of glass —
Poor holy man.

And with his scaly, skinny hand,
He pulls a crumbling grave-cloth up his loins
In sullen modesty.

Not all the long three thousand years of sultry
Thebes,
Nor closeness of his sand-sealed tomb,
Have shrunk and withered him
As this slow, idle fire of ribald eyes,
Day after day.