From Ancient Times Poem by Daniel Brick

The lakes of our country
are turbulent. They swirl
around and around
their basins, wearing down
the confining banks, turning
the landscape into a wide pool.
Trees, shrubs, topsoil, flowers,
all are sacrificed, and water
claims a barren landscape for itself.

The mountains of our country
are little more than hills.
We call the region the High Country
because we are a proud people.
But the winds of the four directions
unleashed their tremendous breathings
against rock and buried gems.
turned hardness into dust,
scattered it into vast deserts.

The birds of our country
are all of one species, vultures
with famished eyes and claws
sharpened against jagged rocks.
Over the centuries the vultures
consumed the songbirds
in a frenzy of appetite.
And silence descended
over the land, broken only

by the vultures' choked cries
as they scrounge for threads of food.
The people of our country
do penance every morning and evening:
they pray in cracked voices for the return
of the Gods, who once imposed order
on nature. WE are ready to surrender.
Return to us, You Gods. WE beg to be mastered.