Gravekeeper Of Culture

Do you think the Earth has a gravekeeper?
An elderly man worked to the bone,
Not truly living himself,
A retainer of Father Time,
Caked in mud of prehistory,

Tending to markers of civilisations that have fallen,
The graves of cultures rotting,
Peoples long past,
Traditions preserved in dirt and amber,
Their stories insulated against times decay,

He is a curator of memories,
Propagator of the ways of peoples of eld,
Pyramids and ruins and spires,
Egypt and Inca and Cree,
Among others these graves will not vanish into dust,

Whether lost to famine or conquest,
Plague or assimilation,
Old flames will be kept alive,
Flowers will bloom upon their epitaphs,
For all to remember and learn,

Our gravekeeper digs evermore,
His shovel groans in earnest,
All cultures fall to the grind of time,
All empires collapse,
Our western culture indeed has a grave waiting cleared.