Like the tailor's suit or the chef's meal, simplicity
signals the master. No coifs or vivid tinctures
brow the face that studied death, sure
in his craft. A clutched, worn tool, for humility
beneath the stitched rictus of his vesseled
prayer. A pupil perhaps, or a rival, performed
this task and, honoring what the master scorned,
urned him basely. With him terse was sealed
the knowledge of what little hope there is
in ritual-that private magic that makes symbols
of things. Neither can we extract balms
from edicts that Illusion, by reason, is all that is.
Even shadows lunge at this leathered state,
crouched in clay, pretending no better fate.
The Mummifier's Mummy by Ricardo Pau-Llosa | Pink Peony Reed Diffuser
$15.00Price
Ricardo Pau-Llosa has published nine books of poetry, the last seven with Carnegie Mellon Univ Press of Pittsburgh. He is also the author of numerous texts on modern Latin American art. In 2023 he was the subject of a major feature in Birmingham Poetry Review, Univ of Alabama.
