1. pre
not to evoke to recreate but just to understand
to get beyond the smear in the soil sniggers
in the still air as we try to negotiate the syllables
that preceded ours can a language be truly dead
that oscillates in sympathy with ours hums just
beneath the skin bronze shields glittering in the sun
market clatterings hands fashioning & decorating
pots these fragments speculative tension
affecting the very follicles cropping the marks
in the soil seen from the air a decrepit culture
pre-civilisation the photos show circles & lines
about an axis a river winding through parks
blasted buildings what we don't see
the smashed
bodies the crop marks the worst of it appear