There – tenth photograph in – at last –
a man, a man on a camel.
Mountains came first,
young stone massive and sharp,
but this is about us
and we must be here.
In this game water trumps stone,
like sand and wind
carved holes through which stars shine.
Once we too – in the ninth –
carved rock; and in the tenth
we carved it and piled it high
into pyramids so men could ride by.
Some shaped dirt into steps –
not so long lasting
but better for rice, for now.
Thirteen and here we come,
men, flesh, then children
and the masses: Hong Kong
tenements, tropical skyscrapers,
Indonesian women rolling my cigarettes,
Polish men smelting your steel.
But all the places are the same.
Poverty and hard work,
a little girl behind bars.
One boat stranded high on the shore.
A crumbling temple, stone statues without heads –
where we are, where've we gone –
a mosque, two cathedrals, and cracked statuary.
A clay army lined and stony-faced,
statuary newly reborn.
Forty-seven: another army,
flesh and rockets.
Forty-nine: skulls without jaws
piled – no, heaped – and bones behind.
Heaps of us, as before people
picked through refuse
brought in by dump truck
and turned over by bulldozer.
Birds and cattle and pigs and goats
but mainly us,
scavenging what we left behind
and carrying it away
in sturdy wicker baskets.
Some waste is better than others
I suppose, trash than skulls
or a thousand burnt-out trucks
lit orange by burning oil
piped to the surface to burn
blacken and smoke.
In the fifty-fourth we come back,
but I don't know any nuns,
any holy men or dervishes,
and you don't finger prayer beads
before rows of burning candles.
The clouds move fast,
streak by; the stars burn slow
overhead; the tree is already dead
and the rock cannot move.