Isis & Ra: Intro + Acts 1-3

Isis and Ra
(Ten Short Acts)

Ra was the Sun, walking above Egypt. Isis was a mortal sorcerer, who sat close by Ra's path each day as he passed. Everyone knew that the source of Ra's power was that he had a secret name, known only to himself, and this secret name endowed him with the greatest magic in the world. Isis wanted to have the secret name of Ra, and she cared for nothing else.

She waited by Ra's path each day until he let fall some spit on the earth. She scooped up the patch of mud and molded it into a serpent, and she made the snake live before she set it in Ra's path the next day.

The snake bit him in his foot, and Ra could not heal the wound because the snake was his substance, but he had not made it. Many doctors and sorcerers tried to heal him.

Isis bided her time, until Ra was about to die. At last she presented herself, and her price.

She was victorious. She healed the Sun, and took on the secret name of Ra, and became thus herself a god.

But his name was not the only secret he shared.

Part I: Truth

How Ra ached to tell--
Secrets fight silence.

They do.
They fight dirty, brandish beauty, browbeat with pain.
Knife-sharp gems in a thief's leather bag,
They tumble, till they punch through skin.

Like any conqueror, she came caked in dirt and blood.
But oh, how he welcomed that wound.
The fang sliced his foot--and his mouth it fell open:
Like a purse, or a map, or a door.

II. But Why Should the Sun Feel Cold?

Chilly walk, Ra's, blank alone in blue: nothing to do high above desert but make it sear.
Nothing to do with gardens below but assault and blind with day, to slice out shadow,
To picture, impotent--in a private, dark-gold mirror eye--
That waving and rippling shade.

No one around him, trudging alone in sky.
No one who could keep up with the sun, so
No one around him to cup it, that jerking little thumb, his heart.

No one to tell him a story
That might answer that riddle he called Ra.
And in case he wanted to tell secrets,
There was no one around.

So his best secret festered like fire.
And gold--forge gold--he
Branded the naked ass of earth
While the world for him was cold.

But not much but rock and sand can love the sun.
Everything else just has a childish crush.
Such he had long since ceased to mark.
What silken things snared his mind, he snapped like spider webs.

Ra had his own word, his own candy prayer though he was a god--
Incantatory candy, he fed himself.
What else he noticed, he threw immediately away.

But that was a lie he told himself. There were things, this and that:
Cries, from shadow below,
Incense, and food on coals;
Women, straddling their males,
On roofs, oblivious to him.
And also a red blur, in every day's mud--
So stable, he charted his time by when it faded away.
That woman was not leaving, anyway.

III. The Watcher

She sat on what passed for a curb, hem in muck.
Wait, she did, each day as he passed on his track.
So patient was she that the royal-red fabric of her shift
Leaked brown at last up to her throat.

Bracelets she rang as he came by,
Hungry for word.
When he passed and kept walking, she set her jaw:
We will try this again. And again.

No mortal man bothered her with cash--They wrote not nor could they read,
But they knew a sacred monster when they saw.
If she beckoned, yes, then they would come--
Carefully, and leave before dawn.
You circle the quiet leopard softly as you can.
On and on she sat.
Ugly children hollered
and pretty insects sang.

One day, she vowed, his light she'd refract.
Like a prism would she trap it--
Hold it boiling inside as other women held a swelling child--
Then like a prism, tilt, open wide.
Until then, well, she could jingle, she could chat.