What they call Alexander's sarcophagus sits
in a museum in the city of Istanbul—
a relic, a lie, a boon to the weary tourist
who shambles in and sees his hand glow
with purple light in a room full of coffins.
Here the dead and disinterred are raised up
on stone plinths and given a style
beyond pretension;
ambassadors and generals,
and would-be saints who still hunt the lion
ride chariots, throw spears, cast nets,
eternally wait for a king not really here,
his bones and linens long ago shredded
when he died of dysentery in the desert
and still seemed a god.
In the West, empty graves abound.
Mozart's not really buried beneath that stone
in Vienna; isn't he somewhere in Prague?
And Poe's monument in Baltimore
receives an annual gift of whiskey and roses
as if we knew whose bones lie beneath the tomb
on Greene street.
If it's not Alexander the Great
in this Turkish casket
decorated with a frieze as narrow as my belt,
I bet he's pleased at the fuss
his long syllabic name makes
of our ignorance and secret wish for an empty crypt
that supposes an ultimate escape for us.
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