Roman lamp

For nineteen centuries
This stone teardrop has laid in earth,

Clay which did not return to its element,
Detritus of another civilisation.

An invisible barrier holds its separateness,
A simple lamp

Left behind in the last going-away.

What do you take on a long journey?
Not this. Lamps are easily made, cheap,

A slurp of clay scooped sloppily,
A rough oval, a hollow for a wick.

Yet underneath, some potter left his mark
Deliberate. It was he who made it an object

To be bought and sold, scratched circles,
A rude rough figure, hardened as a man-thing,

The glow in a Roman room,
A bastion against the encroaching dark.

Now, unremembered, it creates its own space
In earth, someone else’s past.