Historical Balance
Persephone Phoenix / Debra Rymer

the idea came to paint the story
to speak without a dry throat
and listen without confusion
to tell and to know
silent as a hunter
the story always ready
to retell itself

then smaller pictures
and bigger stories
and official tellings
who did
who paid
what must
what can’t
who won

then just the tracks
half blown away
the lines left from
running feet
running hooves
falling rain
swift swoops that
tell about the pictures
like clues or witnesses

we should have hidden
them better
the scrolls and urns
busted and casually
burned so we would
lose the testimonies
of our mutilated
tongues and the old
ways of carving clay
with the vivid curve
of the river that lived
in its name

we should have
saved them but
new men came

stayed and said the land
was new because
they found it and
theirs because they
named it and cut our
tongues out broke
our clay but here
buried in the sand
the tomb of our
civilization speaks
names of our land
our river

in voiceless words
only the dead can say.