Philip Brady
Berkeley, 1968 BC
I am thinking of the city of Catal Hüyük,
elder sister of Jericho, nexus
of stone-age trade, shrine of the chthonic
goddess and her fecund, polyandrous
queens. I am pondering the citizens,
innocent of wheels, of war, lovers
of cats, skilled in obsidian,
who excarnated their dead for sacred vultures.
Today in People’s Park watching a suit
angle his head to cradle a cell phone,
I dwell on the ancient metropolis and its fate:
One day without disaster or invasion
the entire population disappeared
as if their souls were carried off by birds.
