Batteries,
yellow trucks hauling garbage,
ampicillin, napalm.

These too will be
replaced by the not-yet-imagined.

The engines of diesel
will silence,
joining the engines of steam,
the brayings of mule.

And still the poetry of ancient Sumeria
will be understood with ease—

humiliation,
loss,
ambition,
the cutting down of the tallest cedar—

and Beowulf’s verdict yet hold:

Technologies alter.

Heaven swallows the smoke.