Haunt me with the negation
            of obscured villages.

I am obliged
            to read each plaque

etched on brass in a scrimmage
            of anticipatory dread:

1800 and anything, the heroic dead
            fallen in various battles,

savages, this place. Obelisks
            as nouns and verbs

demand approach; colonial rebukes
            to lure the very

water from my fingertips
            with parsimonious concrete

or monolithic rock. Marble
            is forever—bloodless

plinths puncture the blue over
            threadbare towns.

American obelisks imbued with
            belligerent fertility

and futility, when girdled
            in chain or rope, convene

with gravity more easily
            than was once imagined.