Spengler’s Egypt
︎︎︎ Edward McLaren
︎ Oct 29, 2026
For Freddy
‘He is a spirit—see?—you cannot touch,’
Noted the Pharaoh Cheops to his son,
Before the grins of Spengler as they lunched:
Lentils and beans under the noonday sun.
‘Comes from the future, sees into the past,
We on our cartouche, Djede—
His “Teu-ton” eyes, look, see how blue are they!
He tells us we are masterful, won’t last.’
The German smooths his bare transparent head,
Likes geometric gestures from his friend,
Centring eyes upon these living dead
Who are not dead, know how to start and end.
Says Djedefre, ‘But Spengler…you are dead
—A ghost to us, stand here and far away
From where your kinsman wear shirts black and red:
Why have you come back here to us today?’
He sweats as if upon his last breath;
He is back in his office, not this fantasy
Of Djedefre and Cheops...Imentet.
Mathematics homework piles on his desk.
‘Because,’ he says, ‘I have seen our Ur,
Our West; I am not ready yet.
You processed death, are dead.
Urned, You are full. Dead, I have only death.’
‘He is a spirit—see?—you cannot touch,’
Noted the Pharaoh Cheops to his son,
Before the grins of Spengler as they lunched:
Lentils and beans under the noonday sun.
‘Comes from the future, sees into the past,
We on our cartouche, Djede—
His “Teu-ton” eyes, look, see how blue are they!
He tells us we are masterful, won’t last.’
The German smooths his bare transparent head,
Likes geometric gestures from his friend,
Centring eyes upon these living dead
Who are not dead, know how to start and end.
Says Djedefre, ‘But Spengler…you are dead
—A ghost to us, stand here and far away
From where your kinsman wear shirts black and red:
Why have you come back here to us today?’
He sweats as if upon his last breath;
He is back in his office, not this fantasy
Of Djedefre and Cheops...Imentet.
Mathematics homework piles on his desk.
‘Because,’ he says, ‘I have seen our Ur,
Our West; I am not ready yet.
You processed death, are dead.
Urned, You are full. Dead, I have only death.’
Edward McLaren is a third-year DPhil candidate at the University of Oxford studying Jane Austen and gentry blood myths. He is the author of Bothelford’s Gone.
Also by Edward: The Mitfords
Also by Edward: The Mitfords