We find whispers of you, lost brother,
in Lapedo Portugal; that lush, rocky Iberian valley
ochre wrapped like a sleeping seed
sown in the blunt arctic leg bones,
of a four year old child, carefully snugged
in Paleolithic clutter: delicate twigs of red deer bones
and horse teeth like a scatter of yellow dice
a pendant shell drawn from ancient dreaming seas
and the semi-articulated xylophone of rabbit ribs.
Three thousand years after rumor of your ignominious death
twenty-five thousand after those who followed,
we come upon you hidden in the Lagar Velho child,
like a secret prayer, like a stolen promise of immortality.
How is it that you came across the distant years,
undaunted, bearing your genes like a standard;
a banner of skins. Did you, isolated, alone
striding your icy home, find the need for another?
Were you some coarse suitor bearing gifts
of swan bones, fox teeth, the useful jaw of the hyena
come amongst a tall race with your own arctic bones,
the short powerful limbs tempered by the tundra?
Did you, driven by hormonal madness,
you could not understand, but must be slave to,
mutely follow, half turned away in hard humiliation
come before these who carved the hunt
upon stone walls, who tamed
the colors of earth and blood to breathe there,
did you come to these, who wooed fire
from the heavens, and woo a mate?
How else can it be that we have found you?
How else, over a triple century your blood, your bones
live on, in Cro Magnons's child.
I must confess I'm glad that knuckled and hirsute
rough as a cobb, you continued, lent your strength
to the tropic brood and their long limbs,
until only the bones of a four year old child
wrapped in a shroud of ochre-smeared skins
concealed in Portugal's secret earth,
can know your story, and whisper it
softly to us.