Between the Moon and the Sun (Excavations)

I stared, and stared, and stared Following the light with my eyes To see beneath the dress The deep bosom of water suckling Babels on the ancient salt of primal seas. We build our ladders not from mountains But their stones Children searching for the cookie jar Orphans in a tidal war ... And have found more solid answers Digging down When my only dream is up How sense distort our ambiguities! Dashur, Saqqara, and Giza Extrapolate a northern line Imaginary as an equator, as all Our knowledge of wrong and right We are the shards of a bitter fall The Mayan built there And Teotihuacan here Light beyond the dark Caucus frozen caves Map the heaven in solid mud. It is a long walk between civilizations But there is something in the cultures That long to embrace A common history From Palenque, Tikal, Tulun Chichenitza, Copan, Uxmal We climb the stairs of Babel again Shaanxi, Nakkhodka These undiluted Semites sing Upon drums of stones The gospel's truth in them enthroned There seven million shards of stars In a broken desert shining Through the jungle of present night Tzintzubtzan These poor Daedalus Their Khofu and Cheops Just a different mound of dust A metaphor For the excavation of human meaning Something to break the spell of death Something to say of my coming Tomorrow is beyond our regret.