Seven Horizons Poem By Stephen Stepanchev

It is an old story: the oppressed
Become oppressors, the conquerors
Are conquered, the grass rises from
Their bones, and the rat is totem.
The archeologist of mounds,
Studies the seven horizons of death
And discovers endless repetition,
Civilizations wearing out their plumes
And dying under their tin cans:
A shoe in the ashes, a set of false teeth,
A shattered hand, a cistern full of heads
Of broken jocks and forgotten movie stars.
Here in Flushing I let the rain
Wash away my rotting selves,
The rubble of what I was, the thick
Deeps of silence among the ruins,
The seven layers of abandonment
No archeologist will ever read.

Stephen Stepanchev
from Seven Horizons