Against Translation

The songs swept down from the northern steppes

with cinerary horse

and sword and vestment

in the wake of battle

suicidal for a bronze

translation of flesh burnt

to a vertical vapor trail

of fame which, so they claimed,

would be undying

by which they meant

the dying would be just

prolonged

a little longer

as on a ladder

made of air each

legendary smoke of name could only climb

by thinning

till it wasn’t there.

And now as the steel tips of our devices

dig, sort through

and analyze

what’s left behind:

scant traces

of berserk debris, dumb soot of ritual effaced

by dumber ash,

beneath ghost towns

the ghosts have all abandoned,

all we unearth

intact now

are the untranslated

bones of babies,

inhumed at home in older dwellings

on deeper strata

under mud floors

in pits — placed

carefully on sides, knees drawn to chests,

skulls cupped in pebble bones of hand,

the dead nursling,

the stillborn,

the miscarried — unnamed,

unadorned,

as if the only grave goods

buried with them were

their perishing — 

as if that

were what the mothers

wanted to keep close,

keep hidden, safe

from the heroic

stench of burning

upward while their breasts

still swelling dripping

freshened the black dirt

sucking at their feet.