May 191 min read

open sky :: SAMVAAD | 19th may

hosts : Sanjuktaa Asopa & Aparna Pathak

posing

as a hieroglyph

the ibis

-- J.Zimmerman

( THN, vol 22.1, 2020;

THN 2021 Valentine's Award, HM)

6 Comments

Aparna Pathak

May 23

This is what the poet says about the poem:

The story behind my making this verse is that I find Egyptian hieroglyphics ("sacred carvings") intriguing. A friend who is an international expert on the Egyptian Book of the Dead amplified that curiosity. In 2019 I visited Florida. There, for the first time, I saw a wild ibis with its huge beak. The bird was motionless, gazing down the bank of an irrigation ditch. Although it was the American white ibis, its shape and stillness brought to mind the ancient Egyptian ibis hieroglyph, which was modeled on the African sacred ibis. That hieroglyph often represented Thoth, the Egyptian god associated with wisdom, writing, and the judgement of the dead. These fortuitous…