Recent Excavations in Amerika
This is where they lived, memories of their dwellings
marked by baked brick in an outline of Euclid.
Whether they were happy here we cannot say.
Traces of copper worming through the walls; thought
to be a charm to ward off disillusionment.
This we understand. Some fragments of vessels
fashioned lovingly from glass the colour of rain,
stained with a residue of vines, in those days
drunk as proof of success. Now extinct.
A broken blade with lettering in ancient script:
STAINLESS had notions of purity and innocence;
ST was shorthand for Saint. Their cult spoke endlessly
of sacrifice and blood. Object of ritual.
This silvered ghost they called a photograph,
though whether it is the ocean, the smiling
woman or their coincidence it honours
we do not know. You wonder if she loved
or was loved. Their lives have this effect,
their brief, crowded lives. Many of us wept
at the frail bubbles of glass, totems they hung
in every room, not trusting the dark. We believed
that words, or the weight of a thing in our hands
would be enough to make sense of these people,
and the hour and lost places of their passing.