King Aha

Here was a man the world
Had never seen before,
King of territory
With patrolled boundaries,
The first pharaoh, the first
Divine son of the sun

Say archaeologists
And Egyptologists.
(I'm making the last part
Up here. I'm not really
Certain what the experts
Argue about Aha.)

All I can think of is
How new and yet how old,
How ancient and recent
This surprising chieftain
Must have been: almost these
Politics, genetics,

And familiar terrors
We live with today, but
Almost eternities
Ago, historically
Counting generations
As Napoleon did,

Invoking scriptural
Thunder, the way tyrants
And upstarts have done since
Scriptures were to invoke,
Bellowing to soldiers,
"Men, fifty centuries

Of history look down
On us today." We few,
We happy few.  Aha
Might have made such a speech
With less precedent, no
Less conviction. No more.