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"During a railway expansion in Egypt in the 19th century, construction companies unearthed so many mummies that they used them as locomotive fuel."

@@@@@@@ —Discover Magazine, 2006

The companies didn't think of kas whimpering, "Woe,"

when the bodies where they'd meant to spend eternity

dispersed into the desert wind. Nor did the companies care




how many children weren't conceived because workmen

pictured their wives among the desecrated dead—

how many woke, shuddering, at night, imagining

the gaping mouth; the yellow, glaring teeth;

the mummy stench. Those were not days (except

in print) for tender sensibilities. Mobs howled

for hangings. Corpses cluttered the streets

in that time of White Man's Burden—of Drag

the Wogs to Western Ways, and Make Them Pay.

So to the flames the mummies went. Earth

spewed them forth, plentiful as passenger pigeons,

common as the cod that clogged Atlantic seas.

No fear the supply would ever end. No need

to save for tomorrow mummies abundant as air,

mummies good for turning water into steam

to drive the great iron trains that dragged

behind them, in an endless chain of black, shrieking cars,

the Modern Age.