Coronation Of Sesostris Poem by Ernest Hilbert

Shrine of lunar hulls
Swayed to mist in river’s hold
Or solar reservoir dried
To yolk and pollen,

Stroking closed temples
Now fastened in flow,
As one ensnared and grappling
To retain such impermanence—

As one entombed
With swans
And novas, untranslated
And pinned by conflagrations,

Aimless barge tangled in reeds
Bellying fragrant remains,
Figure aflame uncreated
In summoning sunblotch,

A father enthroned and dying,
Hailing stars on doomed concourse,
As startles and drives
A vesselled glare long consumed,

Misspent, annihilated in
This fish-like enclosure,
Processional distance,
A journey beneath celebration,

Circuit or restoration
Of surge unlike departure,
Emperor’s jubilee and
Manhattan in September stillborn,

Some gesture of regret—
Wounded annulus of early sun
Ringed processional through
Cloud to these scribbled lamentations,

Infant and cold of white,
Earth once wept away
Until there will be
No light—



There are sinkings
In the construction of the barge;
There are earths
Dragged broken from the sun.

And what filled the sun with
So many oarsmen or flowers?
There are kingdoms already
In morning scorching

Human skin, bleached and
Wounded with landscape and sky,
Sustained and dilapidated
By the same beauty,

This sewer and cesspit,
River and rotting vein—
This blood is sun-loss
And this blood our ship,

Last stain of enlightenment,
Cast not underneath
But made terrible
In mirroring us.