Arts in Society

Mound

July 17, 2013

Jul 17, 2013

The origin of mound is unknown. It lies buried within itself.

You would think it comes down eroded, from mountain

but the case has not been proved by the legal,

careful minds of etymology.

So I will pretend it comes from mundus, Latin, originally,

for a slight slope Vico tells us poets

framed to mean the whole world, when they surmised

it was a sphere and therefore sloped slightly

everywhere. A mound, too, is a small world sloped

usually for the dead, but not always.

Sometimes hay over grain, like Monet’s hennaed heaps,

sometimes gold bullion or a tonnage of tinned food

waits under the reinforced ground of a mound.

A mound a hill may be carved out and into,

like the Irish hills of Tara were, in pre-history, the rocks

removed room by room, the reasons yet evanescent.

July 17, 2013