Old signs of modernity posted on a
monument still warm from lava
and the salty tongue of the sea.
Dactylic fingers, bleached
ribs, and O'Keeffean flowers sprouting twice a year from the sweat
of tourist brows, cooling into breccial dark debris blowing up
a magi's lunatic hat that comes to a point: What can this
be?
Spire of a buried church?
Coarse black nipple from Cybele's breast, portending
the
future Oppenheimer felt, making its lactate bitter-sweet?
Obelisk by which priests of
Technology hotly debate the dispassionate shadows of
stoic dreams?
Ground
Zero chants below the earth in the same voice
that pumped commands to a sun
that rose in the West
as a new form of death; then rose again, in the East,
to an old way of life.
Pressurized,
alone in their moment of infamy,
stones weep uncontrollably, a bridge floats beneath broken clouds, a temple
bows to shallow bowl of sand...as a plane, like a paper
crane, flies from a child's hand.
