Mute

.

Moai statues at Ahu Akivi, Rapa Nui (Easter Island): photographer unknown, n.d. (NOAA Geodesy Collection)

The broken statues stranded upon the shore
Thin-lip'd pouting ancestors who don't recognize their offspring
Any more. They've been knocked off their blocks
Toppled to the ground, buried, fractured in various places,
Replanted facing away from the sacred ground.

They speak inwardly to themselves of matters and concerns
That have been of no particular moment to anyone
At any time within memory.

Their words are bare murmurs
Scattered on the sea wind, lost
Fragments of unknown languages,
Whispers, half-audible subvocalisms,
Bits of sound as broken
As they are. The only audience is
A passing rack of cloud.

..............................Does the slow
Extinguishing of old stars --
The night sky's wreath unwoven thread
By thread -- happen like this?
One by one they go out,
A dying-off of desire, as the mind
Wishes only for an end to distance
In the light. The light which will be hard and cold

And flowing into rock, as water into stone
By the shore, with no one here
To know this, or to say
These giant shapes ever shadowed out the lines
Of figures with names, to an unconcerned eye,
Into the silence of an island beyond Odysseus' sail.

Ahu Tahiri, Rapa Nui (Easter Island): photo by American, 1999