Archaeology (2)

Among the only proof of the first Chinese dynasty’s existence, the Xia, are two bells found in a cave, one bronze and one clay
Did whoever found them, consider ringing them? If only with, a very light touch?
I think not
All the potential of the past is coiled to sound
 
I hear it when the wind, blows, between and through the tall buildings, like teeth or tuning forks humming in the winter daylight, the closest thing to eternal presence that we’ll
When it’s cold one notices these things
 
It’s archaeology, what you build that survives
Not children but buildings, books, chimneys,
Empty rooms and hollow faberge eggs, imitations of great things
 
If we only had, one instrument, to make it out, float down the river in a biblical escape
Ah
Here is a photograph “A Peasant Mother and her Twilight Sleep Boy”, they’re dressed in what we now recognize as a faux ethnic get up
Since they’re probably American, it was never real
Twilight Sleep of course, was the phenomenon of drugging women in labor with morphine and scopalamine
Not just so that they wouldn’t feel pain
But so they wouldn’t remember, feeling the pain at all
In effect the boy in the photograph, is closer to being a stranger is he not?
 
Similarly, the anecdotal history would have us believe that, before cinema, before photography, we dreamed in color, but afterwards, we dreamed in black and white, until we finally reinvented color again
A whole generation in shadow, in white and silver
 
The doctors who did the deliveries noted that they women did actually, scream like normal, but that they just didn’t remember it
 
The hospital maternity wards were not silent at all, they just disconnected themselves from keeping, the spark of it, close enough to burn them
 
But that isn’t what survives, the empty buildings, parking garages and lots piled high with rubble, landfills paved over and waste dumps marked with warning sign
 
The instrument we would save, the news story about the violin player who left his Stratavarius on an airplane
 
The point of stonehenge is not the light, but the air that flows over the stone
 
The world is ringed with metal and sound
You have to hold
The listening device
Up just right to hear it breathing