ROSETTA STONE

9-30/10-2-99

For Eva

In July we were walking about
on the words of the Rosetta Stone
in Figeac, France
carved in a courtyard commemorating
Champollion (of Figeac)
who read it,
the Rosetta Stone,
found in delta country
Egypt,
in Napoleon's
War,
July, 1799,
inscribed
in three languages,
hieroglyphic,
demotic,
Greek.

He, Champollion, translated
for the world
its tripartite praise,
preserving forever
the honorable words
bestowed on Pharaoh
by the temples of
Egypt --
that now lie
in ruin
beside the Nile.
He opened the birds,
bugs, sphinx, eyes,
elbows, and tears,
hands, snakes,
feathers, and lotus
to scrutiny,

laid bare the ancient's
words, thoughts, deeds,
mystery became history.
The hieroglyphs spoke,
through other tongues:
at first Greek,
then demotic.
The Egyptian Book
of the Dead
is now popular practice,
even recipes for mummy's
are available.
In 200 years
we have began to know
their civilization and our own.
And can write
in cyberspace.

At sixty-six
I have begun to understand
that each of us is responsible
for her own life
(not that I am
always able to move
in the face
of that knowledge.)
The hieroglyphs
are translateable --but where
is the scholar's energy
to figure out
the ancient script
while the sun blazes
down through the billion
billion words already in cyberspace? --
unlocateable as God.

Will they remain
when the machines shut down --
like the tape in the midnight street
wound out, brown and curling,
like the 33 1/3 record
on the thorn
in the desert?
Who will scoop up
the invisible culture
of Earth,
carve it once more in a courtyard
in three languages,
transmit it
to the fighters
now clogging the deltas,
the winds
of the world.








Copyright © 1999 Jan Haag
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Jan Haag may be reached via e-mail: jhaag@u.washington.edu


















October 25, 1999




Dear Eva, It's so long since I heard from you, do let me know how things are going. Hope the house is proceeding apace, and that the money is pouring in. Again, I must say how much our trip meant to me. All sorts of new images and poems and clusters coalescing. I will write, anon, at length.






Love,




Jan