Autobiography at the End of the White Era

I and a few others, born pale, were run out at the head of the Nile,
Walked north and stoked our resentment every time the wind blew cold.
I put on the first shoes to circle the stony shore beyond the fabled world,
And I dressed in pelts to cross the mountains.
I was the first wolf to become dog, taking scraps at the edge of firelight.
I cut sod to close the cave's mouth against the snow
And I took in the whelps and they protected me.
In my ten thousandth year I entered the valley of the brutes,
And with the others I routed them, sent them to the hills,
Tore down their crude shrines, and camped along their rivers.
I organized the great clan into farmers and builders, mothers and warriors,
Potters and weavers, and we thrived and made art.
Later I was a slave captured by the great clan and forced into labor hauling boulders
To raise up rows and rows of tombs.
And I was the captured dark man from the south who carved
Volutes of herbs on the lintels.
I raided the coast of Africa in a fleet of skiffs, and we made off with
Lapis and cotton and olives.  I returned to my valley with stories of
Red and gold, and oranges and dates.
In the winter I told and retold these stories, and in the spring, nearly dead from hunger,
The young men launched their skiffs and made war.
I was buried in cut stone atop a hill above the valley.
I had lived in the city of Romulus just four hundred years when I bowed to the Greeks
And began to write history.
And with my vellum unrolled I saw room for my armies to gather an empire.
I saw Europe spread out before me like a set table, and my stomach grumbled.
After the feasting
I slept a thousand years with the ancients and woke to nausea and headache.
I walked the tax-roads to Athens, then to Paestum and Rome.  I unearthed the
Graceful columns and righted them, and traced the Latin inscriptions and dreamed of empire.
I was the Architect of London after the fire, and I brought to the muddy, sooty, diseased wreckage
The stark white of southern marble, and its light and order.
I was born into rags in Bristol, but saved my silver and built a fast ship,
Took American cotton to Lagos, and black men to Jamaica,
And rum to Portsmouth, and I earned a Lordship.
I lived twenty years in a neat brick house on Long Island, at the apex of democracy. 
Even then, we knew this was our attainment.  Our comfort assured us
We had arrived, even as our women grew restless.
I sent my firstborn to die in Cambodia.
My second gawked as the towers shook and fell, and lost a friend.
You may know me as the blogger who tallied the hypocrisies of the Senator from
South Carolina.  I shouted into the din, but none heard.
I am the last humanist.  I have read all the books in the canon, but I can't remember.
I man the Humvee here at the edge of Har-e-Khut, and I swallow the steel
Of the clever-made I.E.D. and I sleep a thousand years.