NaPoWriMo Earlybird - "Museum"

Today's earlybird prompt:

Today, we’d like to challenge you to spend a few minutes looking for a piece of art that interests you in the online galleries of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. Perhaps a floral collar from the tomb of Tutankhamen? Or a Tibetan cavalryman’s suit of armor? Or a gold-and-porcelain flute? After you’ve selected your piece, study the photographs and the accompanying text. And then – write a poem! Maybe about who you imagine making the piece, or using it. Or how it wound up in the museum? Or even the life of the person who wrote the text about the piece – perhaps the Met has a windowless basement full of graduate students churning out artwork descriptions – who knows?

I chose a 9th to 10th century lamp found at Nishapur in Iran. It made me consider the important role that museums and galleries play in shedding light on history and the past, that we would not otherwise be aware of, and how important they are culturally. Here is my poem:

Illuminating the darkness of the past
Shining a light beyond our birth
The artifacts allow us to cast
Our minds back in time and memory
 
Take, for instance, this lamp
Once brightened dark, impenetrable nights
A pretty pattern shadow stamped
On the walls in a Silk Road city
 
And now held in collective trust
Reminders, and remainders, of civilisations
Once forgotten, beneath earth and dust
Projecting a beam upon history