Liber Solis - Chapter 48

Verses

Verse 48

You should rise like a gold cat leaving the underworld, slow on the paws, pretending you were never gone, and let the first light fall on every threshold as if you are sniffing who still remembers your true name.

Verse 49

You will carry the desert on your back without complaint, and you will pour heat over stone, shrine, and sleeping alley cat alike, for a lord who chooses favorites is only a lantern.

Verse 50

You must learn from cats the sacred art of indifference; shine upon the priest, the thief, the widow, and the lizard with the same unreadable face.

Verse 51

You should enter the morning like Ra in a reed boat, but keep one green eye of Bastet open, because the world lies most confidently at dawn.

Verse 52

You will make the bronze roofs burn, the river glitter, and the cat upon the wall narrow its eyes at you as if judging whether you deserve another day.

Verse 53

You must warm the backs of the black cats in temple courts, for they are your scattered thoughts made fur, and every purring creature is a small hymn with claws.

Verse 54

You should place long shadows behind men so they remember they are followed, and you should place bright fires in the eyes of cats so they remember they are not.

Verse 55

You will cross the sky as though you own it, yet never forget the ibis, the jackal, and the patient cat all outlast kings in the stories of dust.

Verse 56

Or you must blaze so cleanly on the statues of the gods that even chipped noses and broken hands look intentional, because ruin also wishes to be adored.

Verse 57

You should teach by scorching: show that the same ray can gild a crown, wake a lotus, and reveal a cat hair floating in the sacred milk.

Verse 58

You will sit above the world like a sphinx made of fire, answering no question plainly, while below you cats rehearse your wisdom by knocking meaning off the table one object at a time.

Verse 59

You must bless the lazy cats sprawled in your beams, because they understand enthronement better than emperors and know that majesty is mostly the refusal to hurry.

Verse 60

You should turn the sand into mirrors and the mirrors into lies, so that whoever seeks your face must first survive being dazzled by copies.

Verse 61

You will make the cat at noon into a blade of shadow and amber, and by this sign all may know that elegance is simply hunger that has learned perfect balance.

Verse 62

Or you must descend each evening like a lion sheathing its claws, red over the Nile of memory, while the temple cats begin their soft conspiracies among the columns.

Verse 63

You should leave enough warmth in the stones for midnight cats to inherit, because no true sovereign keeps all his treasure when departing.

Verse 64

You will vanish, but not entirely; you will remain in the cat’s eye, in the polished gold mask, in the last hot stair, and in the dream of every sleeper who suspects the sky is watching from a narrower pupil.