ANCIENT AND MODERN

               - A HYMN TO FADED PHOTOGRAPHS -

                        AND OTHER THINGS

                   The pharaoh's bouquet of dead flowers blooms -

                        from glooms of earth a sole red flowering -

                   gathered by hands millennial in our visionless view.

                        Bones are concealed with flesh of bread

                   in which bright red

                   the wine flows through.

                   Your hand

                   at another time

                   has rotted in the sand,

                   your bone

                   from its integument of flesh

                   is peeled as stark as stone

                   beneath the digger's brush

                   flush with the epidermal air.

                        And now appear your other bones

                        which at another time,

                        cushioned,

                        would comb her hair.

                   If,

                   fresh with blood and sap,

                   both hand of now and bloom of then could coexist,

                   if you could gather blossoms for a dying king,

                   bring milk to glisten from the shrivelled pap

                   or to a skin of other generations cling,

                   I'd ask you to desist.