So Tell Me How People in the West Managed to Flip the Heavens

 

In ancient Greece, Ureus was a centaur,
one of those who turned a wedding
into a fight to the death; but Uraeus,
in old Egypt—where everyone
was expected to wager, publicly and by decree,
that the King was a god, and not just any,
but the god of the dead and of death,
and Isis his supreme Queen—
was a cobra which those royal deities
wore as a crown upon their stiffened heads.

And just as strangely, that Uraeus,
the serpent, sovereign over all the lands,
was named after iaret—“she who rises up”;
while Greek Ouranos, being the Heavens,
of still-disputed root, yet in Cratylus (396c),
half in jest, Socrates links the god
and his abode above to horōn—“looking upward,”
and thus as well to a power of the soul
that has grown wings and succeeds in rising
toward the world as it is in truth—
unchangeable, yet passing
over humanity’s down-beaten, mired heads.

But modern etymologists and sophists
prefer the verb oureō—to urinate,
or at least a sense of that which rains
or makes all else wet…
as if the highest were that
which ought least to contain itself.

And so it is truly bizarre
how we in the West
came to think of the highest
as what leaves a body
as the lowest cast—

oddly assured
that the heavenly and highest
would not be “the Risen One,”
nor again like that serpent’s head
clothed in a widened hood—
reared, roused, and grown to strike—

and thus, unawares, swapping head for tail,
as already in Greek ouraios
means “of the tail,” from oura—“tail.”

But Uraeus (ouraios) was a goddess,
and the Eye of Ra—
the eye of a serpent—
encompassing in its black and golden gleam
all the shining of the Sun.

Is this not also why
those Ladies from the Land of Ka
dressed themselves in beaded nets,
reminiscent as much of ophidian scales
as of those Medusa-like shining eyes?

Just as aureus denotes what is golden,
and the aureus was Ancient Rome’s chief gold coin.