Bend your head. Going inside is hard.
Slowly lower your shoulders down
Into the hollow lava out of the sun.
Carry your body sloped forward
As if heavily burdened. You can straighten
Your back and stretch out at the center. There
Is no god-stone. Never in caves. Nor need. Everywhere
Around is stone. God is a round stone
Waterworn, far off on the coast, that watches what dies.
Six men are interred here. In endless sleep.
Look at the big seven-foot Hawaiian-deep
Under sinews and muscles of lava
Lies his tall skeleton. Mark the great size of the skull.
Here uncoffined he came to peace.
There are five more recent skeletons in this place
To your left and down this lower tunnel
Who were brought in by litter to this airless hollow. The bier
Was lowered and left. It has since decayed.
There lies a bier pole. The men are a long time dead.
Ranked, invaded by our stare
Rot the five dry cages. I sweat underneath
The lava. See him-the gag in his mouth,
His broken jawbone, wristbones bound, the cloth
That decays at the crotch. His death
Was hard. I can touch the bone of his rib-my own
I cannot touch. I am nearer his
Than mine. Near death, I gape for wet air. This
Air was caught in the hardening stone
To form chambers. And God is still in the stone,
Below, above, around these dead.
In time, the dead will become God in the stone.
No ceremony more, and none
Is needed, where God, the Dead, and the Stone are one.
We cannot stay. The air is gone.
Come quickly. Think. When I die, I will turn to bone
Like these. And dust of bone. And then, like God,
To stone.