Instructions of the dying elder to his successor concerning monuments, memorials, museums, and other architecturally uplifting structures.

• Author: Klepfisz, Irena
• Position: Poem

These laws are hacked: on rocks in comets' tails passing slowly across our bent time and space They are chiseled: on tablets buried in seas flush with iridescent fish or turgid with oil and civilization's dregs They are inked in black sometimes embossed in gold in Egyptian hieroglyphs Farsi scripts a monk's Latin tome Thus it has always been: the graves of ancestors of strangers of neighbors and of no ones ours theirs mine yours are never to be disturbed For on each gravesite the soil has been mulched with human soul and bone with tears of mourners this air ash and salt of comet showers must never be disturbed Understand further: such ground is forever sacred not for a god but for ourselves remember: we may not build indifferent to the dead houses monuments not even our lives So weigh carefully whether today's new is necessary and make that decision wisely balancing action against the weight of stone There's just so much space so much earth And if you must then erect your marble monuments museums to your better self elsewhere (but may i suggest: perhaps not at all) Keep the whole past holy Be fair above all to those not visible Always be kind and of course generous especially generous in uncertain chaotic times Do not take for yourself what you would not give to others and do not add even more upheavals to this volcanic earth Look: here was a stone once carried ground glazed by glaciers millennia past then carved by a father millennia later to cover the sack of his stillborn child who never breathed the chilled air outside her mother's womb or laughed or cried or sucked or smiled or made anyone happy even for the briefest moment but day after day the father...