Archaeology
2
Archaeology Author(s): Margaret Gibson Source: The Iowa Review, Vol. 30, No. 2 (Fall, 2000), p. 90 Published by: University of Iowa Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20154823 . Accessed: 10/06/2014 21:08 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. . University of Iowa is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Iowa Review. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 91.229.229.56 on Tue, 10 Jun 2014 21:08:05 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
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Transcript of Archaeology
ArchaeologyAuthor(s): Margaret GibsonSource: The Iowa Review, Vol. 30, No. 2 (Fall, 2000), p. 90Published by: University of IowaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20154823 .
Accessed: 10/06/2014 21:08
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].
.
University of Iowa is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Iowa Review.
http://www.jstor.org
This content downloaded from 91.229.229.56 on Tue, 10 Jun 2014 21:08:05 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Margaret Gibson
Archaeology
You who come here, if you come, cannot know how it tasted,
this hook of dried root?
whether its flesh were ocher, gold, color of wild mustard in a field.
You'll have seen photographs of harvest, if archives last longer than houses.
You'll think, whoever Uved here had a taste for the holy?here is
a monk with no hands to fold in prayer, none to protest the imperial episodes, their wars.
And this?was it a flower? Did the woman (Was there a woman?) wear it in her hair,
this blue whorl of a tidal wave and night-blind wind?
You say it may have sprung out of a fetid wetland log? and in the twisted root of dream, if you still dream, parasite
turns to paraclete,
a word pebble as whole as the blue stone earring tumbled in with
the midden of mussel shells and chips of china.
Who Uved here? Ask the corn husk masks. They watched the man
and woman, Uke a mist,
drift over the threshold of a door frame that stood, despite everything, sentinel a while. They let the screen door fall gently to,
they knew where they were going, just down the road, past the bog and its stench of mutant frogs,
a rotted sump of skins and carcasses. They knew what it was to lose
everything. They gave away
their bodies, as the monk his hands. When they prayed?if they prayed, and only for the bland
safety of the dead bolt, the comforts of ownership?it was not
to the wild throb of fire God is, but to its humbled image. Icon and evidence. These you can store.
There was the skull of a beast hung on the wall, and a tree grew out of
it, once.
90
This content downloaded from 91.229.229.56 on Tue, 10 Jun 2014 21:08:05 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
