Some were out stone-cold,
content with sleep, while others seemed
frozen mid-wince, undead the very
instant of the chisel’s bite.

The victors, she said, write their history,
while the losers must carry the weight—
see the shoulders of this ruined maid?

He ached the stone’s ache.
The arms: gone; the face: no lips, no nose;
all claimed
by what became that statue’s history.

A flashing butterfly stilled,
depositing its sulfur on the absent nose.
Within an instant,
darting, rising, the delicate wings
faded in the sky. Could I
chart the provenance, she resumed,
her eyes still pinned where the bug had been,
of one human soul, would the knowledge
clarify? or merely…

Calcify, he said. Right, she said, calcify,
harden like…

She gestured to the statues. Nothing moved.
Nothing moved. No answer came.

The sun flashed sulfur of its own, winked
with passing clouds: a line
of hoary, hooded monks, returning to
their cloisters to illuminate, in silence,
their manuscripts, and write their histories.

Through the gaps in their parade,
each flash came piercing, a jet from a kiln.

Each jet hit garden, hardening
the facts there arranged:

sculpture claims stone;
sculptor claims both.