Creeks of filth in muted canyons/Starving coyotes and unsmiling heat/Scrabbling over vicious crevasse/A melting roadway of shimmering black tar/Pinnacle and terminus/Devolution and ataraxy/Beyond the fence, the mouth of the cave/Its stony gullet a prefiguration of hell/Forever waiting, ceaseless and unburied/Airless hexagrams repeating, unfolding/Years tallied by nails in a cross of iron/As this sanctuary turned sarcophagus/A place of time curled like paper in a furnace/A labyrinth, a warning, a monument mortared with ash/Children’s remains curled beneath the images/Of a sickly cloud blooming bright in the desert/A proud banner faded to pale surrender/Eagle’s talons, Noah’s branch and fate’s arrows of holy war. — “We march in spite of Hell, we do—Atrophy, Entropy, and Proteus vulgaris, telling bawdy jokes about a farm girl name of Eve and a traveling salesman called Lucifer. We bury your dead and their reputations. We bury you. We are the centuries.”