When Washington has been destroyed,

And the pollutants have been silting up for an age,

Then the old town will attract the world’s Schliemanns.

What, they will say, a dig! as they uncover

The L’Enfant plan in the saxifrage.

So many plaques, so many figures in marble

With large shoulders and lawman lips

Will have to be pieced together and moved to the new

Smithsonian

That the mere logistics will delight vips.

For how can one pass by a muchness? There will be fund drives

With uplifting glosses,

Teams of researchers will mass with massive machinery

At the Rayburn ruin

To outscoop Athens and Knossos.

Dusty Scholars will stumble in, looking nearsightedly

At gray facades

Of pillar and portal,

And at curious acres of asphalt,

For clues to the mystery of that culture’s gods.

Money of course they will miss,

Since money is spoke not at all on the plaques there,

Nor will they shovel up evidence

That the occupants of the chambers and cloakrooms

Were strangers in town, protecting their deities elsewhere,

But sanctums they surely will guess at,

Where the real and true pieties were once expressed.

If the Greeks had their Elusinians,

Surely this tribe on the Potomac had mysteries too?

—Having to do, perhaps, with the “Wild West”?

Like most of us sitting here now beside the Potomac,

They will find the Potomac primitives hard to assess.

Oh, may their ignorance be, than ours,

At least less!