The Fertile Crescent

We came to the foothills past the lowland, beyond
the river valley, returned to the same cave,
worked all night by lamps and fire, in the hearth,
inside the oven, oblivious to morning, crawled
through holes between the walls, past the secret knives
buried in the corners of our homes. With eyes of science

in the darkness, past the shadows you can see them
sleep, shining somehow, under the gummy layers of packed ash
painted red. Alone and apart, the same as us --
the round castle, below it the stacked
boxes of houses, and under that,
the children who carry heavy loads before they can walk, who
learn to walk before they can stand.

As strangers we came to this village on the plain
and the forked road there: the tell mounds
of their houses, naked inside
small rooms clustered
beneath sleeping volcanoes, the world's first people
built on the ruins of before. Painted ceilings
and a great bull's skull in the clay wall
stand guard over the dead hidden
in pits beneath the open floor, covered with red ochre,

their bodies folded knee-to-chest,
pushed aside each year for new souls with their
skulls removed. And one stranger understood:
inside that mud and plaster, here
is the end of wandering -- obsidian mirrors
in stone corners shine leopard spots as a
goddess gives birth, as beaks of
vultures reach out through her breasts.

Both god and man lay claim to this land,
and they wait.


2011