Three Prehistorical Poems for February

Listening Deep Within Ourselves

Scientists find evidence of “ghost population”

of ancient humans.

You call us ghosts, your own ancestors,

As though we conspired deep inside your consciousness

Like demons out to get you and turn the course

Of  history against you, you godless stinking mess.

We all lived together in the forests, shared rivers

And herds of four-footed ones, and, yes, sometimes

We quarrelled and came to blows, but nothing could reverse

The basic patterns of our growth as cousins; no crimes

So bad we would not speak together or make love

To celebrate the seasons. You make it sound obscene,

As gradually over the millennia we walked hand in glove,

Until there were no differences to speak of. Unclean,

You call us, as though we were not mixed together

Forever like macaronic verses or birds of a feather.

The First Song in the World

The oldest song. they claim, comes from Ugarit

Transcribed in chiselled letters, which they now strum,

But what they mean to say—I am so angry I could spit—

Is the first one they found. What about the drum

Or the hand slapped on the chest? Without wit,

These fools! I hear in the baby’s babble and the mum

Responding, archaic melodies, from tit

And slurping tongue the earliest harmonium.
In twisted tunnels of the cavern, where they lit

Their lamps, they danced and sang; no need to strum

On strings of the creature’s guts, so they sit

Together and weep for siblings, until there come

Out of the rocks themselves the echo-gods

Who live beyond this life of clay-born clods.

The Last Performance of the Ancient Songs

We have come into the caves deep in the earth, and crawled

Beyond our understanding to find our destiny;

We have moistened our hands in ochre, and bawled

Like infants at the beginning of time, and sunk our knee

Into the madness of the hunt and the fearfulness, and sprawled

Across the boundaries of life and death, dug into the debris

Of many generations’ hopes: made our mark

On the ceiling of hallucinations, over bats and bears,

And cried out silently to the vibrant voices in the dark,

All things beating their wings, overbearing—

Until the beasts depicted heave and sway, stark

Reminders of what lies ahead, sounds beyond hearing:

Contemplation in the savage ciphers of our song,

Revealing how the ancient ecstasies went wrong.