the enso

"It Boils Down To This" by marlowe

the poem

Your efforts — voluntary or conscripted —
have been reduced like a soup’s broth
to this rod of stone piercing
through the center of a plaza. You are
memorialized, the destiny manifested,
and each subsequent settlement,
every march Westward,
is now a roadside plaque, a whisper.
Do you care? Did you
believe in the cause as you drank
water from cracked pueblo pottery
or did you bend to obligation, either way
succumbing to someone else’s
yoke. Was your family given
gold or a legua of land in payment
for your service? Do you sit
with the pigeons when you visit
this site? Do your descendants recognize
your sacrifice, so duly noted? Do they stop
to read the names or see the birth
of an empire later reduced to etchings
and artifacts, set aside as another
opportunity opened?