Somehow, we’ve acquired a statuette of Bast,
Egyptian cat-goddess, at some point in the past
This bric-a-brac that lumbers
And infests our house produced her;
A manifestation, bronze, she sits in the hearth
Uneasy alongside the firedogs
With a bland, impersonal gaze
Somehow, and also in the past, of course
We acquired four real cats,
Real cats, for real, for better or for worse
Real cats familiar with witches’ curse
And invocations;
For midnight duvet invasions,
For yowling for food and
For sleeping curled up in a tight
Yin-yang ball, by the fire,
On a bed in the hearth.
The Egyptians, so I’ve heard
Would have worshipped them;
And when the owner died, he too went in
The same tomb, mummified,
In the Temple at Per-Bast
And why not? Look in any English church
The chainmail knights’ feet, pointing forever
Towards Jerusalem, are resting on a bratchet.
Worshipped in Egypt, cats; gods of the house
Foe of the mouse, the rat the snake
Guardians of grain in times of plague, ague and ache,
Allowed to eat from the plates of humans,
Milk to drink, (that much, at least was true of ours,
Sometimes, before we’d finished…) and I think
Maybe we also worshipped them, but
In our own inadequate way
Bast was their guardian, throughout,
The Lady of Cats - when the last one ailed
We lit incense, smoke from the joss stick
Hung round Bast’s statuette, veiled her,
As we prayed to every deity we knew,
But this time the Nile refused to flood,
There were no miracles in the bulrushes, and
The Red Sea stayed unparted, all spells failed.
So go, and bring me Cassia and Cinnamon,
Juniper Berries, Oil of Cedar, Myrrh and Henna,
Raise her a garden-cairn, a pyramid;
Bring me Nile-water to wash me and console me
Bring me incense of Dittany of Crete,
And soap that I may shave my eyebrows off,
While I’ll still miss her whiskered kiss, old puss,
Purring companionship, look down to find my ink
Blurred by the tears that rain on the papyrus
My grief wrought with this metaphor of Bast
Ringing on the dull anvil of my brain
