Every room is full-proof. The halls
are built roughly the same
on purpose,
so you
always seem to
know where you are;
you're
always familiar
with what's on the table.
A bowl, pale and glum gold
like a soft luke-
warm sun.
A chalice
brimming with
a lake called The Ocean,
hollow
in the middle,
like the counterfeit words of incantation.
Pointed polished jewels, shook down
from their place in the sky,
scooped up
and retrofitted
with a familiar silhouette brutally-
but-indomitably drawn across them,
its four limbs stiff and stoically pointed,
a new kind of ancient pagan sundial
(now featuring Roman numerals)
made to keep new time
a little more slowly,
in order to blur and cover-over
how gradually—the symbols,
emblems of
the conquerors
come to be
fiercely adored
and worshiped—by the conquered.
