Gathering Dust

Gathering Dust

A new exhibition is being curated
In the All-Africa Museum of World Culture
Where, subject to strict temperature controls
The complete set of Stonehenge uprights is on display
In another room, a signed Folio of the renowned shaman, Shakespeare
And some Grimes Graves ancient arrowheads
Please mind your fingers as you pass. Refreshments are available
Along with souvenir replicas of the Mona Lisa (a recent purchase
made at smiling gunpoint)
The original cast of The Marriage of Figaro
Stuffed and tastefully mounted
Right next to the section showing
Admirable bits of admirals’ rears
All contained, of course, within the European room. A room with
Medieval pedigree reaching back to the times of
True-Cross-Splinter collections and saints’ worship-worthy knucklebones

Beyond this faintly rotting gathering of gods so dead
That sacrilege is no longer deemed to apply
A woman waits, burning her journals, and weeping like her mother did
For her gene-generations tell stories from other caves
Whispered on days of blessing and mourning
Sung over moving dunes under starlit skies
In forgotten tongues that only scorpions hear
And single-filing children seeing scimitars
Feel the dust-walls fall and dream of feelings
Those Victorians failed to crush in drabness

And having felt the power-pulse they move on
Confident that heaven alone archives what is true
Here, perhaps, new cathedrals of the senses
Collected collective celebrations
Will rise in sandstone dreamblocks and shine for all.