Rumors And Ghosts

What is true
of one man,
said the judge,
is true of many.
The people who
once lived here
are called the Anasazi.
The old ones.
They quit these parts,
routed by drought
or disease
or by wandering bands
of marauders,
quit these parts
ages since
and of them
there is no memory.
They are rumors and ghosts
in this land and
they are much revered.
The tools, the art, the building---
these things stand in judgement on the latter races. Yet there is nothing for them to grapple with. The old ones are gone like phantoms and the savages wander these canyons to the sound of an ancient laughter. In their crude huts they crouch in darkness and listen to the fear seeping out of the rock. All progressions from a higher to a lower order are marked by ruins and mystery and a residue of nameless rage. So. Here are the dead fathers. Their spirit is entombed in the stone. It lies upon the land with the same weight and the same ubiquity. For whoever makes a shelter of reeds and hides has joined his spirit to the common destiny of creatures and he will subside back into the primal mud with scarcely a cry. But who builds in stone seeks to alter the structure of the universe and so it was with these masons however primitive their works may seem to us.
--Cormac McCarthy
Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West

Derek Bell: O'Carolan's Favourite