He strolled on desert cliffs; tumultuous sunset
Drove his long shadow choppy over sands.
Look out! Slabs pitted thin by emery weathers
Spring ringing, pitching him down. Numb knees and hands
Gather beneath him; now he droops and rolls
Like a floored boxer (groggy) his low head.
Ten feet above, a steely well of sky.
He had a flashlight; gropes, scatters instead
Something that rocks like pottery, then the cool
Chromium flashlight fumbled-on in gloom.
Shadows before its conical ringed eye
Stampede in a forty-century-old tomb.
Under an inch of dust, some rags and bone,
Some rubble of royalty: the trained eye reads
Skulls of a boy and girl, his hacked with fracture,
Her armbone splintered among turquoise beads.
Cinnamon, cassia, clove, mysterious such
Run from the tippy skull like hourglass sand:
The girl’s hair shorn close for windy riding,
A curl of cheek in lotus lagoons tanned,
And a whole shoulder near the fractured head
Almost intact. El-Greco-lean. Stroked
By fingers shy as a new lover’s it
Fell sneezily apart like ashes poked.
See the man hunched there? See his bleeding knee
Jostle the thirsty bone that, brightened, dulls
Immediately like blotters? See him breathe
A stuff once rounder, sounder than all bells?
Gazed enough? Now: come over here and look.
Use mirrors or mere tears; stand on your head
(The inventor’s vantage): see the hourglass welling;
Where all was fall, inexhaustible spring instead.
Spring on the desert cliffs: barbarous sunrise
Breasting the chariot chased with Re, his disk
And halo of snakes. Newly imported horses
With feather head-dress and eyes rolling, risk
One four-spoke bumping bronze wheel on the limestone
Lip of the gorge; the riders shout and lean:
She smiling, Nile-green eyes narrowed, golden
Throat and one shoulder bare-do you think a queen?
Well his queen. Green pleats knotted round his middle
(As athletes from the shower), back flat and tanned,
His falcon eyes half-hooded on her, laughing
Like skiiers down and over the dazzling sand
Balancing paired (as if some god should breathe
In young Californians intellect and soul).
Abruptly they rein in: sinew-ridgy
Bud-swollen pillars by a ferny pool
Under two touselled palms: knotted sandals
Squeal in the sliding sand; the lovers’ lips
Explore at ease in their lost language, spelt with
Hawks looking hard at you, baboons and ships,
Snakes, fishes, bitterns, bees, the crescent moon
Flesh-and-blood alphabet. (That’s flesh and blood
Rounding the haggard hipbones’ pillowy sand.)
It would be now the ghost appeared, midflood
In sunlight (as in mingle of moonlight once
He came inspecting with archaic stare),
A rickety skeleton, gold-circled eyes,
Ore in his teeth, a wide skull without hair;
His left arm leathered to some moldy gold,
His right (dry splinters) poking a chrome rod;
Before him buttons floating in air pit-patter
Castanets on his breastbone with each nod.
A very harmless ghost. “Don’t scare the ghost,”
She teased. They kissed again, knees touching still.
He doddered off. They, whistling their wild horses,
Sang as they clattered madcap over the hill.
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