Joan Houlihan

The Mummies of Wieuwerd

Since 1609 four corpses and a few birds suspended above have been lying under a little church in the Netherlands. The bodies have remained well preserved. Tourists come to view them regularly.

Gone small in their shut vault, dirt-
lodged in a chancel, they are close
enough to teach the properties of bodies.

No more turbulent circlings or late-
candling autumn leaves disturb them.
Under saints, under footsteps

of the altar-addicted, a choir
mistaking paralysis for holiness,
they are denied decay.

In the face you can see it:
wrinkles heaped like tiny ladders,
a stalled exodus of possession.

Bald and modestly turned, one is so
tubercular you can see through him,
abdomen to back. And strung above,

a row of ornaments upside down:
canaries, starlings, a parrot hung
by one leg frayed as burnt rope.

What wanted to hurt them? This cause
not outside us, its abandoned damage--
merely looking makes us receptacle.

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