Poem to the Mummified Remains of a Chinchorro Mother and Child

The people who produce the poet are not responsible to him: he is responsible to them. — James Baldwin

Mummy from the Chinchorro culture (7000-1500 B.C.) Northern Chile, Southern Peru (photo by Pablo Trincado).

Poem to the Mummified Remains 
Of a Chinchorro Mother and Child 

The people who produce the poet are not responsible to him: he is responsible to them.  
                       — James Baldwin
              

I'm certain she hummed to him when she was dying, 
when, for a few breaths,
she saw he was not breathing, her son, 

who crouches next to her now, 
in a sack cloth that's lost all its color, 
its pomegranate and pollen blossoms fading 

to the color of earth and water, the color of dirt 
we crawl from and to from the start 
of generations, from the touch of the first mother,

father watching silently as his bride and first born 
follow each other toward the music. 
Perhaps it was he who placed the small clay pot near 

her in the sack cloth that holds their bones, 
perhaps it was he who bound their bones, 
prepared them, tenderly, 

remembering the curve of her body 
from a…