The shrill trill of the baboon, 

a crude tune sung beneath the moon.

Taking swills to steel their wills—

The turning monsoon rumbles.

 

A grumbled warning from within the fog.

In fright, along the logs

bundles of pillaged goods tumble,

dogged by the blackened, evil sky.

 

Out goes the cry to start their heaving,

forced a reprieve from their reaving,

Men spry and otherwise are obliged to comply

and make for leaving that beach.

 

Now the screech of the baboon,

if gone before next afternoon, then not too soon,

reaches their ears and beseeches

they not maroon when so close to shoring.

 

Above, the roaring typhoon

declares no one immune and that soon

the warring clouds will release with a pouring

that will leave their vessels strewn about the seas’ floor.

 

None could ignore the foreboding tone

of the stone-cold crackling unknown

An uproar of vapor

sent a score overboard, scattered.

 

Then battered against the tumultuous waves,

a batch of graves in the deep, enslaved.

Above, the sails are tattered— the mast, shattered,

one craft caved and was sucked below,

 

eroding into what history has lost;

the cracked stone of temple walls.

 

Inspired by my observation of the punt relief cast from the "Temple of Hatshepsut at Deir el Bahri"