They Lost Everything

Mostly, people race people,
Not all of nature, not time.
The most trivial knowledge

Could be left in the desert,
On the steppes, in the deep woods,
And lie there for centuries,

For thousands of years, for more,
Yet be recoverable,
Often. The profoundest thoughts,

The proudest piled libraries
Of great civilizations,
The complete works of genius

Haven’t the ghost of a chance.
Someone’s going to burn them down.
Someone’s going to cart them off.

Someone’s going to ban them all,
Tear them into strips to use
For corpses or shithouses.

Someone’s just going to sell them
For fertilizer, filler,
Insulation for your walls.

Fragments usually survive,
Just enough to tantalize,
But the most terrible quakes,

Volcanos, storms, tsunamis,
Tornados—they’re all people.
You can store all the knowledge

Of your time in a salt mine,
As ceramics, as plastics,
As gold plates placed in orbit—

If someone doesn’t like it,
They’ll hunt it to destroy it.
What’s left is what’s forgotten.

What’s kept is what’s forgotten
Long enough to be treasure.
May these words be forgotten.