by Neil Doherty

“[R]esearchers sniff ancient mummies to study preservation… Spicy, woody and sweet:
it sounds like a description of a fancy air freshener.”
—The Guardian

I’m swaddled in cloth from my head to my feet,
anointed with oils and waxes and balms;
my fragrance is woody and spicy and sweet,
cinnamon, cloves, eucalyptus and palms.

With Isis, Osiris and Horus and Set
guarding the gates to my netherworld quest—
with all of these fidgety daemons, you bet
I’m off to the afterlife smelling my best.

But what if the ending the gods have in store
is cruel, debasing and temporal, if
some dour archaeologists pummel my door,
pry open my coffin and take a great whiff?

Heaven forbid, in my sacrosanct tomb,
they sicken and retch and they foul up the room.
Better by far that they do not recoil
but savor embalmer’s ambrosial oil.