Oh ye slaveholders,
hesitant emancipators
and empire builders run manifest -
time will have its way.

Grain by grain,
nose by nose,
eye by eye,
you will return to stone - inpressed.

A monumental hypocrisy
blown into a mountain
will no longer preside
over ponderosa pine
and in that place, once corrupted,
the granites will prove this vanity.

In another age, perhaps
some distant race, chiselled, inflected
but unknowing shall squint upon these
weathered myths and wonder,

as we look upon the Sphinx
and so wonder -
why these haunches,
why this withered broken face,
staring blankly into sand.