The Anubis of Alcázar
No ship, no road, no mortal reach—
he folded the sky where no maps go.
Old walls, half-broken, held their breath
beyond the gates of Tarifa.
Thunder that night became a roar,
a whirlpool where no stars were seen.
Black clouds split above the shore;
Through their torn eye, the god appeared.
Nile dust still clung around his feet.
He trod where Moorish arches caught the sun.
The fountains stilled, unsure how to greet
a name their azulejos had never known.
The scales that once had carried hearts
now held nothing but the breathless air.
What drew him from his ancient throne?
What fold of space had set him there?
Why did he come?
Plague crept black through field and door.
Iberia bent beneath its weight.
He touched the sick, and sickness turned to gold—
fever lifting, loosening fate.
With fingers dipped in the ancient Nile,
he brushed pale foreheads into light.
The dying woke and learned to smile,
gold dust clinging to their skin.
But some he could not save—
no gold, no grace;
their fever lay beyond his reach.
For them he kept a slower pace
and bore them through the Alcázar gate
to the mounds above the beach.
No stranger, after all, to the dead—
his oldest charge was guiding souls.
Ma’at walked beside him, feather in hand,
as he led them through the halls below.
Down the hall of scales they went,
each heart weighed against one feather.
Some woke among the Field of Reeds;
some passed from every world forever.
Old voices say the orange trees still shake,
though no wind stirs the Cádiz stone,
as if each branch, remembering, wakes
and knows the God who came alone.
High where Sierra de Enmedio climbs,
past forlorn paths no one dares trace,
a statue stands, carved in older times,
guarding what none can reach or face.
No road ascends. Neither foot has pressed
the stone where jackal eyes watch the sky.
The old god’s form remains at rest
while wind and mountain wolves pass by.
And when the wind crosses, gaunt and dry,
the mountain whispers his old name:
“The Anubis of Alcázar.”
