Henge
After a sculpture titled, Forum, by Thomas Sayre
Outside the glass wall
That separates us
From the cold and below,
Covered with an icing
Of melting snow,
Are the half arches
Formed of earth-colored stone
Placed so no two can
Connect, an almost row
Of almost arches
Among the broken gray
Of stunted columns left
As if to the wind on some acropolis;
A henge whose shadows
Rotate across the grass,
Slant across squares of paving
To remind us
That time is told
By the movement of suns,
By melting ice,
The shattered rock
Of a ruined forum which
The Gods in their irony
Destroyed, and now preserve
As warning, a monument
To vanishings
Michael Fallon, senior lecturer in English, was inspired to write this poem about Thomas Sayre’s 2014 sculpture, Forum, while gazing upon it from the Dresher Center for the Humanities’ second-floor conference room. Fallon’s fourth book of poems, House of Forgotten Names, will be published by Salmon Press of Ireland in late 2017 or early 2018. He has taught at UMBC for 30 years.
