Saturday, February 5, 2011

hidden art

In Egypt
dunes cover Akhenaten's metropolis,
smashed to smithereens by
violent ancient conservatives,
certain they could erase all trace
of one sun god, of change.
It cost a lot of money to do that, destroy an idea.

Juju, an 8-year-old Saudi girl, would agree.

Over centuries the sands give up tantalizing bits of glory;
a woman's mouth beautifully carved, a battered stone glyph of Aten.
Who survived? Perhaps fleeing along trade routes to distant places, exiles
wrought history into vivid chant and ballad, the people's mnemonics, singing witnesses into existence.

You hear, you see, said the bandaged man in Tahrir, now you too
will remember.