Sphinx, the Louvre

Some time before time
a sculptor and mage
polished pink and gray granite
into this form
caught my soul
and breathed breath into me.
Later, but still
long before this
there was sun
I was warmed dreaming
on the steps in front
of the pillars
of the temple
and in that long dream
I could see the blue Nile
shining under a brilliant sky
saw the rippling heat
shimmer up from the
distant desert floor
while behind me, priests
made offerings to
Sakhomet
Horus
Bast
on the eternal altars
I guarded.
Then an eclipse
abandonment
and slow centuries
of crumbling exile
in an empty quarter
before that vain little
self-crowned emperor
stole me away
sailed me across the ocean
at the centre of the world
in a strange wooden ship
with no sacred lotus prow
to display his power
and eventually bundled me
and much of his other swag
into this ill-lit basement
for the amusement of
the masses.
He too was eclipsed
in his own good time
and bundled
to a quiet island
and my quiet smile
never changed.
Now these
heedless loud children
urged by
their heedless loud parents,
after a bored guard
leaves the gallery
to go to the washroom,
climb across my broken paws
for the purpose of taking
inferior souvenir snapshots
with annoying flashes
yet I daydream still,
remembering
the minor god
that I was
that I am
that I will be
and crouch
a patient cat
shuffling its hindquarters
endlessly ready to spring
across this dimly lit cellar.