Embrace the soundless dignity of death For now his name be with the passing dead.

Grieve not because Lord Sipan has died Under Peru's amber vernal, open skies:

Unlike turquoise in a cloudless sky His jewels and gold splendid they lay.

Here, his tomb faces the divine silent sky, In the Sipan Valley, where vultures fly.

Still on the Northern verge a sunset looms: Sipan's glory on pyramid tombs.

Beyond our loss is a potent recompense A newborn loneliness for soul and spirit:

Thrown through the lofty, cloudless heavens To earth's ephemeral fading Rose—Sipan!

#1308 4/9/2006 [Written in Lima, Peru] Notes on (commentary): Old Civilizations: I have seen many of the world heritage sites, they are fading like the one in the Sipan Valley, where the Pyramid of the Moon and Sun, reside, and where the Lord of Sipan's grave site remains; worn out by rain, and other elements, disappearing as man watches. Perhaps that is why it seems to some, I am on a mission to capture in pictures and verse their last morsel of flesh on their skeletons. I don't blame anyone or thing, it is as it is. Life is a trail one is hiking on, some times you are in the dust of the road, sometimes in poison Oak, other times you're in a mudslide, seldom, are we in the sun, in the valley, smoking a Havana Cigar, but when you are, grab the moment.

Thus, are the world's sacred sites is likening to us? We must not stop people from seeing them; they belong to them and that would be breaking the spirit of humanity: to save a stone, and slight man, as less worthy: he is worth more than the stone. Perhaps we can put them in the Valley with a Havana Cigar by their sides, and polish them up, so the next generation can afford to see them. Whatever the case is, Civilizations vanish and new ones emerge, we will rebuild them old ones should we feel it is necessary. But now it is our time, and we must, touch them: feel their power, grace, peace, and wisdom, it is all built within them.