The Rock

(This was the lead poem in my chapbook "a model of the universe", published 2014). 

 

It started with rock
Large, grey-streaked
Monolithic by the river
They found it there
The tribe
Settling by water
Looked up at its lines
Carved -- by fire? by air?
Surely it meant something

Later, a city
Mud brick, straw on the roofs
And the traders from bark boats
Would stop there
Look at the rock
Go on

They invented writing
The runes on the rock
Forming their symbols
There, an ox, there
A sheaf of wheat
But when the first receipt
Had left the chisel of the first scribe
Everything changed
The rock was different
Was it the light?
The message was changed

It became their holy duty
The priests, mumbling
Incense-blessed
Would study the incised runes
The rock lit by sun, moon, fish-oil lamp
It was the name of God, they said
But their eyes grew dim

They made mathematics
Invented to decode the rock
The prayer wheels spun
Combining, subtracting
They made codes no one could break
They took the continent
Blessed be the Name, they said
But still unknown
Blank as the empty sky

As the centuries went
Lenses focused on the rock
Computers buzzed
Mystic visions rolled red-hot
And a special guard
All facing in
Watched it, unceasingly
In case it might change again
The cryptographers
-- Impossible, they said --
The cryptographers
-- Impossible, they said --
Any message would have fallen to them
Codes crack, shatter
There must be none

The first atomic blast
Flashed through an empty city
River vanishing in steam
They had left the bomb there
The runes marked on its case
An offering
Perhaps the rock would be left,
Some said, imperishable
Or the secret name be freed
Or the world vanish

The rock is there
The blast is there
We do not know the end