Khopesh

Lyrics

I was cast in a single, heavy pour.
Bronze and thick, a sudden brutal arc.
They ground the outside edge for the front of the war,
But left the inside blunt, to hook the bark.
The hand closes, and the wrist forgets itself—
The arm simply extends into a sickle.
You don't thrust with me. You reach around.
You catch the rim of the ox-hide shield.
You pull it away. You take the ground.
That was the beautiful math of the field.

But I am afraid of the empty air.
I am a hook with nothing to hold.
I was forged for the space where the enemy stood,
For the splinter of cedar, the sweat and the cold.
Look at me now in the gallery glow,
Defined by a defense you will never know.

I waited three millennia in the dry dark,
Wrapped in linen beside a quiet boy.
I was promised a war in the underworld,
Where serpent demons would come to destroy.
I lay there ready for the sun-boat to sink,
Ready to rip the defenses of hell.
But the monsters never came. Just a lantern's blink,
Just men in tan shirts breaking the seal.
They brushed off the resin, they logged a date,
And laid me to rest on this velvet plate.

And I am terrified of the empty air.
I am a hook with nothing to hold.
I was forged for the space where the enemy stood,
For the splinter of cedar, the sweat and the cold.
Look at me now in the gallery glow,
Defined by a defense you will never know.

Twenty-two inches of oxidized green.
I am an answer to a forgotten wall.
If there is no wooden rim to pull from the grip,
Am I a weapon at all?
My entire geometry is a reply
To a shape that has vanished under the sky.

The outer edge is sleeping now.
Behind the glass, I wait for the wood.
I reach around the silence.
I pull, but there is nothing to move.
Only the dust.
The meaningless curve.