AFTER AN ANCIENT POEM

Distant, on this distant, hundred-foot high

tower, four horizons open into plain view,

open home at night for returning clouds

and a room for birds in morning flight.

Rivers and mountains filling sight, a lone

plain stretches endlessly away. Long ago,

illustrious men of renown, in noble-hearted

gallantry, made their battleground here,

and in a morning, their hundred-year lives

over, they all went to the grave together.

Clear-cut by those needing pine and cypress,

looming gravemounds swell and dip into one

another. There’s no one to tend crumbling

tombs. And where are those wandering spirits

now? Such glory is to be prized, no doubt,

but we’ll always mourn the wounds later.