The Romans retreating from the wilderness of Britain four centuries after Christ, left mosaic faces laced gray with lichens, left their stones, dressed and ordered as soldiers in the rain. In downtown Rangoon, a leftover edifice of empire sprouts trees from its Victorian brick while a mile away crowds swirl colors skirting the gilded pinnacles of the Shwedagon Pagoda. In the countryside, the woven bamboo houses pour dust-brown children from window and door surrounding a church's brick fortress where swifts skim through windows stained only by sunset. At the end of sovereignty, just as the sea gardens a wreck with coral and anemones, the emptiness of empire fills up, a compost of leaves and wings. |