The Face the Jungle Kept

Before the maps and border lines,
Before the roads through jungle rain,
The Harakbut walked these ancient vines
And learned the language of the plain.

High on a wall of moss and stone,
A weathered profile meets the sky.
It stands where roots have long been sewn,
Where rivers pass and years drift by.

Some call it chance and fractured rock,
A trick of shadow, vine, and seam.
Yet elders hear another clock,
Still ticking through a deeper dream.

The forest keeps what men forget,
The names erased from printed page.
Its memory has not faded yet,
Nor yielded to a newer age.

No hand may have engraved that face,
No chisel shaped its solemn form.
Yet something of a people’s grace
Still lingers there through sun and storm.

The Amazon speaks without sound,
Through canyon wall and emerald shade.
And those who listen may have found
What time itself has never swayed.

For not all monuments are built,
Nor every truth in books is stored.
Some rise from earth untouched by guilt,
Where ancestors are still adored.