His life began amidst the parapets of the city, the aging stone carvings drawn and refined from the beginnings of the coalescent chaos. Beyond it was the green and refreshing forests and lawns he had seen but still only knew as rumor.

Whose monuments were these pillars in circular squares? Whose monuments to the forgotten moments when shouts and debris littered the streets, when the smoke of emotional sloganeering rose from burning barricades?

He walked these streets with their dull and disagreeable doorways, walked among the crowds like vapor through the sidewalk vents, walked through the city whose heartbeat was the clicky-clack of computer keys and the grinding wheels of failing industries.

Rigor mortis had long ago set in but where else would an archeologist go but along the sclerotic arteries that grid the routes where trash was collected and burned?

He could sense his own withering death in the decay and corruption of the abandoned warehouses, in the vacant tenements where not even the hopeless sheltered.

He could sense his own withering death in the tattooed tombstones blossoming like prophecy on his skin.

He could sense his own withering death in the crumbling stone flowers whose dust fell like dry snow from the facades of once contemporary lives, from the once promising and confident commerce of continuity.

He could sense his own withering death turned to stone, huddled in the dark entryway to history.

Ö à l'image, VARAN aux mots