New Poem
Today’s Poetics prompt from Merril at the dVerse Poets Pub is “Passions Stamped on Lifeless Things.” I really like this quote from Percy Shelley’s Ozymandias. The challenge is to write a poem about an historical artifact.
I’m reading The Lost City of the Monkey God by Douglas Preston right now, so I thought I’d focus on the artifacts found during that excursion in Honduras.
When the Future Comes to Plunder
Why do we carve the stone
to imbue it with our judgement
and put the fault on gods–
a power over life, bringer of death
Why do we, the grave-robbers,
look upon these symbols
and not imagine the artist,
admiring the vulture
and in joy scraping
its likeness into stone
or in awe of the beauty
and the power of the jaguar
pounding that emotion
into symbol? No.
The grave-disturbers see
a representation of a shaman
spiritually transformed
or a half-human deity
and a sudden,
catastrophic
disappearance.
When I am at rest
don’t lay my art beside
For when the future comes to plunder
I can only wonder what beliefs
they would ascribe to me.
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Experience Writing 
A very interesting and thoughtful poem. Well done.
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Thank you.
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Deeply moving and profound, Maria!
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Thank you.
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You are welcome.
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I suppose it really is difficult to not put our own interpretations and values on objects from the past. We really have no way of knowing what such objects meant. Thank you for your thought-provoking poem.
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Thank you. I really enjoyed your prompt.
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You’re welcome. I’m so glad you did!
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Wonderfully thought-provoking words, Maria!
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Maria – I love where you took this… it’s really so so interesting what we ascribe to our dead after they are gone. I get frustrated sometimes with things that other family members ascribe to my father who passed away several years ago…
❤
David
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Thank you. I’m glad you related to the poem.
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Well that is so powerful…and so unfortunately true…lovely flow to the poem…
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Thank you.
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I love your poem and your question at the end. It is interesting to ponder what people in the future will dig up and find left from our generation. Perhaps our flash sticks and memory cards will be the hieroglyphics of the future!
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Thank you.
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