Eye on the Scarecrow
by Nathaniel Mackay

—“mu” twentieth part—

The way we lay
  we mimed a body
   of water. It was
this or that way
                              with
         the dead and we
       were them. No
                                  one
     worried which…
       Millet beer made
 our legs go weak,
                                 loosed
  our tongues. “The dead,”
                                                we
       said, “are drowning
    of thirst,” gruff
     summons we muttered
  out loud in our
                               sleep…
    It was a journey we
 were on, drawn-out
  scrawl we made a road
of, long huthereed hajj
                                           we
    were on. Raw strip
   of cloth we now rode,
      wishful, letterless
                                       book
        the ride we thumbed…
    Harp-headed ghost whose
      head we plucked incessantly.
 Bartered star.       Tethered
                                                   run…
   It was a ride we knew we’d
 wish to return to. Every-
     thing was everything,
nothing no less. No less
                                            newly
   arrived or ancestral, of
     late having to do with
  the naming of parts…
    Rolling hills rolled
up like a rug, raw sprawl
                                              of a
       book within a book
     without a name known as
        Namless, not to be
arrived at again…
                                   It was
   the Book of No Avail we
were in did we dare name
  it, momentary kings and
                                                queens,
     fleet kingdom. Land fell
   away on all sides.

                                    Past
Lag we caught ourselves,
   run weft at last
 adequate, shadowless,
                                           lit,
    left up Atet Street,
  legs tight, hill after
      hill after hill.
    Had it been a book Book
 of Opening the Book it
    would’ve been called,
                                            kept
under lock and key…
                                       Hyperbolic
   arrest. Ra was on the
                                          box.
 It was after the end of
the world… To lie on
     our backs looking
   into the dark was all
      there was worth
                                    doing,
  each the aroused eye
one another sought,
     swore he or she
                                  saw
   we lay where love’s
 pharaonic torso lay
     deepest, wide-eyed
                                         all
night without sleep…
                                        “String
   our heads with straw,” we
  said, half-skulls tied with
     catgut, strummed…
                                          Scratched
    our strummed heads, memory
made us itch. Walked out
  weightless, air what eye
                                              was
      left…

               Someone said Rome,
      someone said destory it.
Atlantis, a third shouted
                                             out…
    Low ride among ruins
 notwithstanding we flew.
  Swam, if often seemed,
underwater, oddly immersed,
                                                       bodies
        long since bid goodbye,
                                                    we
   lay in wait, remote muses
      kept us afloat. Something
 called pursuit had us by
    the nose. Wafted ether
                                               blown
low, tilted floor, splintered
       feet. Throated bone…
   Rickety boat we rode…
                                               As
     though what we wanted
  was to be everywhere at
                                              once,
an altered life lived on an
                                               ideal
       coast we’d lay washed up
         on, instancy and elsewhere
                                                           endlessly
    entwined