Talayotic

So one island population
In the Mediterranean,
In the Bronze Age, good with slingshots,

Notably avoidant of fish
Despite their sea-girt surroundings,
Eschewers of the potter’s wheel,

Managed to haul huge stones up ramps
To make large, t-shaped megaliths
That later peoples named taulas,

That is, tables, so-called because
Later peoples believed only
Giants could have made such structures

And must have used them for dining,
Since giants would surely prefer
To eat at giant-sized tables.

Stop there. What is it with people
Being so awestruck by themselves—
Again and again inventing

Wild stories about gods, giants,
Advanced, lost civilizations—
Incredulous that simple folks

Could have raised those statues, temples,
Aqueducts, highways, pyramids,
Etc., etc.?

Maybe there’s truth in such nonsense,
In that what populations learn
To accomplish thanks to language

And cultural inheritance
Exceeds what any brain could learn
From a single human lifetime,

And when a culture goes, that goes.
Plus, every culture has its own
Skills, which it takes as its birthright,

But is gobsmacked by the others.
How could they know how to do that
When they didn’t know our basics?

They must have been a giant race,
Or they must have had black magic,
Or maybe they were aliens.

Ask people why people are smart,
And they’ll rattle blather at you.
You don’t know what you are, do you?

Sonneto Lazaretto

Three or four little rooms
Ending where a couple
Links arms just outside them,

Or else two little rooms,
One a little larger,
And no couple at all,

All inside, like closets,
Like drawers slid in the chest
Of a snug little song.

Small wonder roars will want
Out of quarantine while
Small sounds feel most secure,

Most contented confined
By the precise device.

Words Are Letters

From ghost to ghost
Hand to hand and
Throat looped to throat

The words wind round
Like squirrels on trees
Vines on their trunks

Lines looped on lines
Dear ghost dear ghost
Hope you are well

I am thank you
And you as well
The trees don’t mind

The trees were mind
Once all words now

The Demon’s Translation

He cleared his throat.
In the middle
Of life, I found
That I was lost

In a dark wood.
I have lingered
Since then, hoping
For some kind soul

To come along
And show me home.
Now and again,
It dawns on me,

This is my home,
My punishment
For those damned poems.
Then I forget.

Our Glass

Something so closed it opens on you,

Wrote Barbara Wuest of a window

In an issue of Paris Review.

Save the line and preserve the phrasing,

Since it feels apt for more than windows--

Everything in the world, for instance,

From whatever position you take—

The beyond-conversational world,

The world beyond shame and confession,

The world that does not come with stories

Shaped for easier understanding,

Something so closed it opens on you.

A Hollowed Stone

A geologist writes about bones
Petrifying, returning to rock,
And the stray minerals in your bones

Almost ache at the thought. Awareness
Balks. Awareness won’t be permitted
To go on through the transformation,

Nor to come back on the other side.
That’s the thing with fossils. They don’t talk.
They may be packed with information,

And you may invest them with meaning
And claim that they, figuratively, speak,
But they don’t bewail their outcast state.

Awareness may lurk within skull bones,
But nothing much haunts a hollowed stone.

Dear Diarist

All your letters, all these years,
It’s high time your diary
Answered something back.

It might be worth finding out
What your diary’s doing
Stuck there in your drawer.

It’s been thinking and thinking
How to get out of your life,
To lure someone else.

Molecule by molecule
It’s been loosening its lock.
It will fall open

One day, if only someone
Curious comes rummaging
And takes it away.