The Course of Empire Unwinds

Two hundred millennia and to set foot out of Africa the first mistake
Since then night border patrolling and the whacking of unfamiliars

The work of all those years spent attaching oneself to a tree
The effacing of the white sails that crossed the first prairie

A thousand days glittering with blood in the glass cities
Gem engorged carved amber arcades

Ignored by wave after wave of blind invaders
Evening prepares their ceremonial tombs in sacred waters

Decanted from the lake of black stars and sunken plunder
Its messages rising before them in the false atoms of dreams












View of the Avenue of the Dead and the Pyramid of the Sun, from the Pyramid of the Moon, Teotihuacan: photo by Jack Hynes, 2006

Jaguar mural, Calzada de los Muertos (Avenue of the Dead), Teotihuacan: photo by Victor de Lafuente Flores, 2007