Martinez, Dionisio D.

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The Prodigal Son:  Amnesty

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© Providence College  The author(s) permits users to copy, distribute, display, and perform this work under the following conditions: (1) the original author(s) must be given proper attribution; (2) this work may not be used for commercial purposes; (3) the users may not alter, transform, or build upon this work; (4) users must make the license terms of this work clearly known for any reuse or distribution of this work. Upon request, as holder of this work’s copyright, the author(s) may waive any or all of these conditions.  The Prose Poem: An International Journal is produced by The Berkeley Electronic Press (bepress) for the Providence College Digital Commons. http://digitalcommons.providence.edu/prosepoems/ THE PROSE POEM: AN INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL  Volume 6 | 1997 The Prodigal Son:  Amnesty Dionisio D. Martinez  Dionisio D. Martinez THE PRODIGAL SON: AMNESTY In one of the photographs from Giza, he's riding the obligatory camel whose humps, through the generosity of perspective, appear as tall as the pyramids that rise in the background. So much is missing. In those reckless early days just after the West discovered the region, eternity was disturbed by thieves. He wonders, in the letter that accompanies the snapshots, what has happened to the loot over the years. He writes about the Nile, about the time he came so close to blowing up the Aswan High Dam, how sometimes he regrets the attempt and sometimes he regrets having walked away. He says that you can actually see the shape of history being defined and deformed by the river and its floods. There are ruins more beautiful in their decay than most human faces in their prime. Ultimate justice, he says, must be something like Olympus or Valhalla (as far as he knows, Egyptians have yet to name the place) turned inside out at the other end of the eternal spectrum, an empty field where every dead pirate, every vandal of mummies and canopic jars, returns something stolen, and the pile grows into a spontaneous monu-ment to ourselves. 

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The Prodigal Son: Amnesty

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