Abandoned City
Mary Winters
One day it was decided:
time to go. Instinct to
move on hit -- sudden, resolute,
absolute. So Mayas dropped
everything. Left behind
the stair-step temples, the
giant carved heads, the weavings,
the pottery, the grooved stones for
grinding corn -- older people
who refused to leave, who stayed
behind to tend the jungle.
The mystery of departure: to
leave it all without a clue --
their going tried to better death,
to imitate the end: use a
homeopathic cure to forestall it;
fend it off with sacrifice --
toys and beds and houses.
