Deserted by the fleeting glacier
that once bore him here,
a boulder stands eroding
above a windswept valley.

Tibetan ventriloquists pose
beneath a silken awning,
whilst poor forgotten Mithras
looks on in bewilderment.

An author relentlessly writes
his soporific life’s work,
fingers smudged with
yesterday’s dead beetle ink.

Peasants fish for eels
beside a feotid canal,
as an Inca death mask grins
through flaking lapis lazuli lips.

An asthmatic mongrel twitches
and dreams of happier days,
lungs rustling like
some ghostly crinoline.

And further on an Abbott gives
his holy-roller blessing
to men in chain-mail,
four-wheel-drive caparisoned for war.