|
|
|
|
Ram Your kingdoms have been stripped away from you. The rivers of your tribute have been dammed. The great emperors that favoured you now lie Deep buried in the dune of centuries.
The hands that shaped your stony horns are gone. But you are Ram, sculpted, more immortal; Born-again by archaeology's spade, You're once, twice and thrice the cynosure. Your horns are whorled. Your pedestal survives, Grained with the stain of old oblation's blood. Your eyes are blank. Your beatless heart is cold. Your tongue is muter than your craftsman's muse. You're the stone ram – the silent oracle Who is forever therefore, never wrong.
Your lengthy queue of worshippers are gone: Policed by priests, weighed down by sacrifice, They touched your hoofs with reverence and awe And lay prostrate before your pedestal.
Your lengthy queues of worshippers are back: Policed by curators, cameras poised, They touch your hoofs with reverence and awe And bow to read your history article.
But you are stone; it's all the same to you: The bronzen altars and your fatted priests Leading your cattled people by the nose… It doesn't change for high-street-templed rams, The browsing masses swarm your swank museum As fatted dealers scheme your next auction;
And all the while, deep in your masoned soul, Browsing demons view your long freehold, Drawn by lengthy queues, an empty house, And their lust, even for a faint semblance, Of the reverence of the human being.
Chuma Nwokolo, Jr. 14th February, 2005 email Writing Ram
On my first visit to Oxford's Ashmolean Museum I found myself spending all of the time I had planned for the entire visit at the temporary exhibit of Greek sculpture by the entrance. Eventually though, I moved on to the Egyptian alcove where I turned a corner and walked into the imposing figure of a ram. It was the famous Amon. As usual, there was the small history card positioned just below the pedestal. Although I have never worn spectacles, within that dimly-lit interior I had to lean over to better read the history article. I was thus engaged when it occurred to me that to an objective camera (and there were many about) I was engaged in an act of worship. My first thought – idle though it was – was that the position of the article was secured by an Amon acolyte on the museum staff, intent on procuring worshippers for his bereft and captive idol. After that moment of flippancy, I saw an opportunity to unite my impression of the private collector (who shuts himself up with priceless antiques, which he worships with a regular sacrifice of valuable time) with my long-held suspicion that, worship a stone long enough and some capricious demon was sure to come along and animate it for you. By this time, the line 'your kingdoms have been stripped away from you' was looping in my mind. I paid ten pence for an information pamphlet on the neighbouring Sudanese Taharqa shrine – which is by the way, the largest single exhibit in the Ashmolean – on which I scribbled the first and second lines of Ram before moving on. If the Ashmolean was this inspirational, I'd have to do this again. There is an interesting (perhaps apocryphal) anecdote behind the lines 'the silent oracle/who is forever therefore, never wrong' and it was originally related by my mother: a certain supplicant visited a stone oracle to interpret the omens for her prospective marriage. She paid the requisite fees to the high priest who tossed a diviner's necklace before the oracle and, interpreting the position of the beads, prophesied a successful marriage. In the fullness of time, the marriage soured. The angry supplicant returned to rail at the oracle, which was provoked (perhaps by the unfairness of the accusations) to utter its first (and last) words: 'How dare you accuse me of lying; Did I say a word to you?' Chuma Nwokolo, Jr. 14th February, 2005 email A Literary
Evening at the Ashmolean Museum. 5.30pm, 4/11/2005; |
| ||||
