The San Jose Poetry Center produces Caesura magazine, and in 2012 published an elegant edition themed with poems related to the millennium, the end of the world, and other endings. I'm glad to have a new poem included in this year's edition, entitled A Great Civilization.
If you'd like to own a beautiful copy of this year's Caesura, email the San Jose Poetry Center to order a copy.
A Great Civilization
In the island forests of Bolivia before
any white man found them, the Arawak
cultivated lianas thick as a human arm,
blade-like leaves dangling six feet long
and smooth-boled Brazil nut trees,
the thick-bodied flowers smelling like warm meat.
Earth mounds rose above waters cultivated as canals
for travel between spacious villages framed
by moats and palisades, along which they’d walk
in long cotton tunics, heavy ornaments dangling
from wrists and necks. But in 1927,
anthropologists found their descendents living
in constant hunger, no clothes,
no cows or llamas,
no musical instruments,
no art—except necklaces of animal teeth—
unable to count beyond three, no religion,
no conception of the universe. They
thought they’d stumbled upon a primitive
humankind living in the rawness of nature
for millennia—unaware that when the first
Europeans arrived centuries before, influenza
and smallpox raced ahead, bringing
the Arawak to their knees. And no one
knew, till now: scientists piecing together
records of teeth, shards of pottery,
eco-analysis and voila!
a great mysterious culture heretofore
unknown emerged from the mists
of history. Might we too—
this culture of moon travel,
the great web of internet,
an entire library of world music
in the palm of a hand—one day
be discovered again, as
barefoot entrepreneurs
having lost it all.