Stone Pharoah

Stone Pharaoh

And, the stone pharaoh broke free
of the ancient mountain
that held him prisoner for so long.

The stone pharaoh broke free, like a golem.
He was bigger than life – much bigger than life.

Yet, far, far overhead,
the giant date palms rose higher still
as they spun like dervishes,
so fast their fronds rose to the sun
while the colors of the twentieth century
glittered at the banks of the Nile . . .
small . . . quiet . . . and alive,
feeding life into the reigning date palms
in the ancient land of the stone pharaoh.

Each year at Passover, I spend a fair amount of time thinking about the Exodus story and its allegories. Thus, my focus today is Egypt, the narrow place. What better time to share a poem about a pharaoh? I wrote the poem in Dec 1995. It was inspired by a very vivid, Technicolor dream. The palms were the height of skyscrapers.

The image is an edited photo of a collage I made to go with the poem. The collage was always disappointing but today I edited it on IrfanView and cropped it severely and I like it much more. The collage was made with paste papers, foil, photocopies, and plant matter.

For more pharoah images, visit my Passover set on Flickr.

Visit this link to see how I reworked the pharaoh image a day later.

If you're wondering what a golem is, this link brings you to Wikipedia -- they had far more to say about golems than I ever knew.