Replies

Two translators and an archeologist
Went traveling beneath the rising sun,
Behind the broken pyramids of Egypt,
Searching for a treasure in the dirt
Laboriously covering the sands of time.

They wandered for a while, halfhearted
Talking about Israel and Mecca
As if there was nothing here worthy
Of making a pilgrimage to:
Historians are often peculiar.

And then, to awake:
The scrolls were there, shining and golden,
Dripping in value like butterflies
Drenched in precious, diamond dew
The ink a faded purple, like the shades
Of leaning shadows cast across the plains,
An ancient cursive hand, archaic tongue
The translators alone could understand.
Inside those microscopic drops of ink
A thousand light bulbs, every one a glow
With fingers luminous, extending out
To shake the hands of their descendant children,
Little ladybugs, buzzing with age
And wit and work and wonder—
Dripping still. The photons in their day unnamed, unknown,
Like tiny sparrows in their migrant flight
Those incandescent bulbs not yet invented,
Spilling light across the songs of men,
The voices of the dead remain alive,
Whispering into the ears of death:
Enchanting her, persuading her to dance
And flaunt her mystery between the eyes
Of living generations, staring straight
Across a vacuum to the spirits dead—
The written word can cut across the sky,
That endless barrier, celestial wall,
And speak as if the earth were born to hear
And listen to these light bulbs of the past,
And time shall spill its mercy and its tears
For young Narcissus, dead before his age,
And left with but a flower as his tale—
“Tell my story,” shout the haunting dead
Through what is left of them. The genocide
And persecution suffered at their cause
Will wreak its havoc well, but once or twice
Will pause in face of glory and rethink
The tread of fate, a looming thing of darkness
Barely present, yet the vital force
Behind these thousand flowers on their tombs,
These carcasses in turmoil without breath,
These living forces sanctifying nature
With their fragile light bulbs. Fate controls
All that is ours and will be; fate records
Our secrets in her stolen tapestries.
Hung as an offering to heathen gods,
The well of history is scant and dry—
The bucket weighs more than the water does,
Yet every handful of its lighted store
Will echo for eternity, will shine
Even in days when none are there to hear.

The translators sat there a while,
They thought in tender choirs and Hallelujahs,
Pondering the meaning of it all,
Each sat to work, produced a different scroll,
In his own native tongue, so all could read.

But then they found that each
Had translated the text a different way,
And rose in argument: they fought alone,
With unembellished words, and spoke alone,
The ancient scrolls untouched, upon the sand.