i.

a white shroud hangs before the mountain, the sun
is wan and thin, ebbing through the particles of ash in air.
burning, burning, the rancid and unbid fruit of harnessed fire.
far off dying trees groan, dry bones splintering.

ii.

they backfilled the vulture-signed enclosure, the raw
phallic stones pushing against earth and sky
and the spatters of blood and beer on the thirsty earth.
rough worked back into the dark with ragged stone.
finality, and they walked away, into days to come.
a conclusion, and a beginning. the barley was nodding
along the spare limestone hills. göbekli tepe slept cthonic.

iii.

and then, grain, and cattle, and
earthen banks and ditched courses cutting the land.
they raised wooden beams to the sky, and wove beams
within beams and so dwelt above the earth, suspended,
houses circling a vast inner space. across the widening water,
in cursus limning holy spaces, others raised
timber to mark the ways, precincts of some rare power.
and then—when their time was come, when the cycles
of the stars and the cattle’s births and the grain’s rising
were meet and right and the signs were set,
solemnly they set their worked woods alight.
burnt house horizons along the southern
steppes, great flames licking at the skies,
smoke as of incense rising, a kenning of the limits
against which they had pushed, a need to start anew.
the isles’ timbered precincts, too, they burned clean to ground,
only ash and charcoal remaining. as a burnt sacrifice, maybe,
a searching memory of the garden lost, of ways
not taken. what is most immediate and close, cannot
in this world last forever. we must let go in offering.
hall and enclosure, consigned to the fire, works as of ash.

iv.

what did those neolithic delvers and woodturners know,
that we do not? what biting ghosts and bitter demons
did they stay with their fiery forced obsolescence?
what acts of propitiation and doxology did they summon,
in the setting alight of shape and form, a stop, and a release.
I wonder as I watch the smoke hang motionless on
lookout mountain, drifted down from our new burnt horizons,
on a world fast burning, without ritual or guide. perhaps it is
time then to backfill our own sharp clawed monuments,
and to let the old timbered frames give way to new,
to see what will grow in the unhallowed ruins.