The Ladder

He worked years on the tablet, deciphering the pictographs. He knew it was a kind of language, those images. An eye. A bird, maybe a crow. A basket of wheat. A ladder. Did the order of the images matter? He cross-referenced similar texts. He studied the history of the region and satisfied many hours in the tablet's service. In a cousin language, a ladder was the word for happiness, to rise up, to be lifted above the ordinary. After years of work, he sorted it out. It was poetry, bad poetry, adolescent: "Today, I am happy, happy all this day, today."