The Ends of History

Another capstone tumbles down
The mountain, and another arch
Has left itself two hoodoos now.

History’s weird geologists
Will gather up the crumbled bits
To make cement, then replace them,

Hauled back up on the backs of beasts,
Workers, peasants, soldiers, slaves, up
To where the air’s back under them.

History’s like this. It never
Accepts that change and gravity
Are greater and beyond its grip.

It gathers ruins in its skirts
To run uphill like Sisyphus,
If Sisyphus had longed for this,

Had never had another end
But shoving rocks uphill again
For the thrill of that end again.