ARCHAEOLOGY Poem by Nuno Júdice

I look at the mould of men who were content
to have an outline of the divine. With the winds
and tides it has dissolved, freeing itself
from the ephemeral alchemy of hands, sharing
in the secret of cyclical movements, random
changes, decisions written in a star's path.

I pick up the figure that seemed lost. A
quick glance with the flutter of butterfly wings
in the afternoon's cremation . . . I seek
its abyss, a well's black depth staring back
with no surface reflection, and I find its restless
emptiness in a silence of mirrors.

Although they say a reproduction can never have
the luster of the original, this image offers
a taste of dead things: the light of dawn, the gold
of an ocean horizon, the foggy breath of early
morning. I linger with them, content
to feel their slow corruption in the soul's roots.