Do not venerate the place.
It is passive and did not write the songs
and knew no clever rhymes nor mastered
meter with the well-placed feet that you so admire.
The event was a magnificent fleeting sliver of time
that bloomed in our past and grew in our
unintended lying to fit a need,
way beyond the deed.
You set it on an altar with signs and guides
and glass cabinets;
but the goodness of the moment, the worth
of the story, is long gone.
Gone in reality, passed. Living on
in your words which are a distorted
lense that bends the light of the truth
so it curves to fit your purposes,
however well intentioned.
Do not venerate the place, do not
make it an undeserving monument where white-gloved
curators must tremble at an imagined
majesty and handle the crumbs of our
everyday tables with a breath-holding
reverence, heavy to the touch with
import and meaning which they agonise
over obsessed and
are tested so that they may say
they have a certificate that signifies
their understanding of what we were and
what we stood for in every way.
We lived here in ordinary ways. We made all
our mistakes, fallible and room-spinning,
puking, with a depth only you see and we wished
we had in our time. Your artefacts were our broken clay pipes
and your big discoveries were the rotting bones
of our dogs. So, do not venerate the place;
lay down the next generation of
legend and trails with your own flints and sonnets.