He strides up the hill in the morning sun
Earrings, armlets glint in crystal and bronze. The path is red
Will be searing to the touch later.
He blows a double-pipe, a lemon-sharp sound
Echoing down thirty thousand months to where
I sit on the hot sandstone, burning noon.
Here have sat so many plump plush tourist
Bottoms, lightly sweating; and, before,
Sat earth a million days; and before earth
Sat, kilted, his brown buttocks. Rest beneath
The shrine. Looking back through clear air
To his people, sex and archaeology mix:
Bare breasts and codpieces; black locks waist-long;
Eyes purpled, raised to hill tops where goats roam,
Darkened down caves, recording butterflies
And birds, looking for a She - or many.
Can I think llke that? And what was like that
Anyway?
This poem has not been translated into any other language yet.
I would like to translate this poem