Empires. John Balaban

on the edge of the high prairie,

      up by I-25, the inmates are rising off

      their roosts at San Miguel county jail

      where the jail log reads like catechism:

      Criminal Sexual Penetration in the first degree. Assault with

      the intent to commit violent felony. False imprisonment.

      Extortion. Unlawful taking of a motor vehicle. Conspiracy.

      Burglary of a structure. Contributing to the delinquency

      of a minor. Kidnapping. Conspiracy to commit Aggravated

      Battery. Aggravated DWI (7th offense). Possession of

      drug paraphernalia. Driving on suspended revoked license.

      Probation Violation: Possession of marijuana, Possession of

      Methamphetamine. Aggravated stalking. Aggravated battery

      on household member, resisting, evading, violation of a

      restraining order, obstructing an officer. Vehicular Homicide,

      Aggravated DUI, Open Container, Reckless driving. Assault

      with a deadly weapon. Assault with intent to commit a

      violent felony, with intent to commit mayhem.

      The key word here is “mayhem,” spreading through

      the internet airwaves across the vast Llano Estacado

      where mountains break into mesas and scrub,

      dotted with piñon, cut by arroyos and twisty creeks

      and a web of old footpaths made by ancestors.

      And where the internet’s thousand channels

      are offering their social contracts, so

      whether you are watching from prison, or at home

      in your double-wide, or in the sleep cab of your semi,

      or in your townhouse at the city’s edge, or at Urgent Care,

      the local laundromat, or in a bar that never closes,

      wherever you are watching, you are probably just sitting

      (and doing this a lot) tuned to hucksters selling

      vacuum cleaners and Jesus, channel by channel:

      #9012: Puppy Pooping in the House?

      #9013: Thick Hair Guaranteed

      #9014: Rev. Run’s Sunday Suppers

      #9015: Suffer from Lower Back Pain?

      Mayhem being confusion turned to violence or lassitude.

      But whether in the lockup looking out,

      or among the hardworking folk of the Llano

      in adobe-and-stone compounds and corrals

      in, say, Ojitos Frios, Tecolote, or Villanueva,

      when you see the rain dropping its dark curtains

      over the vast plain, some Spenglerian twinge of memory

      must arrive … of the massive adobe pueblo at Pecos,

      of Coronado with his armored men on horses,

      or, later, as the centuries stood still and Spanish dreams collapsed,

      of trading with Comanches and learning to hunt buffalo

      charging bareback into the stampeding herd with lowered lance,

      shoving it into a thundering beast until it stumbled and crashed down

      with all its wealth of meat, tallow, bone, and hide. A barrel

      of buffalo tongues for the Viceroy in Mexico. Cibolero,

      Buffalo Hunter. From cíbola, Spanish for “bison,” from Zuni, tzibola.

      Cibola, the city of gold that was never found.

      GODS AND EMPIRE

      1. XENOPHANES FLEES BEFORE THE PERSIANS

      If horses and oxen had hands and could draw pictures,

      their gods would look remarkably like horses and oxen.

      Xenophanes of Colophon, ca. 570–480 BCE

      All day we trudged north along the Aegean, cold rain

      squalling, whipping up whitecaps, churning sandbars,

      eating the beach, rocking pines, hissing sand-sleet.

      But the hardest storms came at night, scouring us

      huddled in dunes as strikes of violet light flashed

      off the cliffs, igniting our faces when thunder boomed

      and we were caught out not by pursuers, but by the gods

      the soldiers whined, as they crouched under leather shields,

      like dogs in the deafening downpour. By morning,