When this hand is gone to earth,
this writing hand and the paper beneath it,
long gone, and the words on the paper forgotten,
and the breath that slowly curls around earth with
                                              its old spoken words
gone into lives unborn and they too gone to earth—
and their memory, memory of any of these gone,
and all who remembered them absorbed in air and dirt,
words, earth, breeze over the oceans, all these now other,
there may as in the past be something left,
some artifact. This pen.   Will it tell my?    Will it tell our?
This thing made in bright metal by thousands unknown to me,
will it arrive with that unnameable wish to speak a music,
offering something out of all I moved among?
singing for others unknown a long-gone moment in old time sung?

                                                                       The pen—
will some broken pieces be assembled by women, by guessing men
(or future mutations, beings unnamed by us)—
can these dry pieces join?   Again go bright?   Speak to you then?