Photograph of the Temple of Hercules, Agrigento

At the site, my chief thought was to pose
my daughter, standing there where these eight shafts
support a frieze of air, for photographs;
and I forgot to look for the pale ghosts
who built the honey fluted ribs that rose
from the stone spine of a sleeping god, his roof
blue sky. She stands between columns that dwarf
her nine years, toes the backbone of Kronos'
grandson, in a red dress: Having come
that far, two thousand years, I might have tried
to picture in the Doric monochrome
a washed-out earth whose first blue was undyed
heaven; for whom blood was the prime red—
whose gods, overexposed, lie dormant but not dead