The Discards

Civilization and the meanings
Of your existence always come down
To what you discard, to your middens.

Tombs are lovely. Decayed castles, too.
All sorts of ruins are picturesque
But, if there’s any meaning to them,

It’s found in the interpretation
Of whatever information’s left.
Ashurbanipal’s burnt library,

The detritus of Oxyrhynchus—
That’s where you find your scraps of Sappho,
Your schoolboy copies of Gilgamesh—

In refuse, ruin achieves true depth.
Even the information in teeth
Comes out of what they deposited,

And the denser the undigested
Mess, the bigger the bolus of waste,
The more it might tell what comes after.

Want to know what an empire this was?
Want to understand what life was like?
What was discarded will tell you best.