Sunlight has exploded in the temple of storms,
of lightning, wind and weather.
Sun is baring down on the bare earth
in the satellite photo of Palmyra, the flat earth
of Palmyra, temple of Baal, blank
space where the temple stood,
where the temple has flown in smoke,
its weathered yellow limestone,
its columns, the dignity of ruin, gone. Gone,
the old man, Khaled al-Asaad, the Syrian archaeologist
who had cherished the ruins
for fifty years, murdered, his body hung
in the public square. I want to say something exploding,
but everything escapes like smoke.
I want to stand before this, I want to be
a column still standing after the torture, the killing,
the bombing, because there is
something I need to know, a piece of my being
wracked with dissent. A piece of my being. The 82-
year-old man, there in the photo,
crouched proudly before the antique busts, he
the very one who chiseled and lifted them away, carried
what could be carried, loaded
what could be saved into trucks, himself
doomed already. I am lifting and carrying the residuals,
and the sun is taking what it can,
has always taken what it could, leaving
the rest in shadow. Temple of Baal, Yahweh, false
god Hadad / Beelzebub,
these in succession or overlapping, these
to be worshipped or destroyed. These to be
worshipped and destroyed, stone
by stone dismembered what had been
ardently assembled in the wracking pros
and cons. Khaled al-Asaad, I repeat
your name in the name of memory
and its delineation, exact and crumbling as stone,
what can be seen with the inner
eye, what can be wholly held in the heart.