AFRAID OF PLACES,
AFRAID OF FACES
Nothing amiss in the jungles of Africa now - the
Zulu warriors have all gone home, with their winning
ways and glamorous thoughts. The shaman was
fried at the stake for one too many mistakes.
Gazelles and giraffes, alike, applauded. I was
not keen to continue, but bravely soldiered on.
-
The pinnacle of a power is sometimes just a pyramid
of mind - a vanity, a mistake, a bad confluence of
events that no one stopped. The first man who made
the dugout canoe - where would that have been? -
some Nile basin warrior or some Allegheny speedster
in buckskin and leather? Floating by committee, with
all to agree? I'd never know. I'd always wonder.
-
Like those dark people in the caves of Lascaux,
flinging a pigment by the light of the torch, putting
an ochre or a madder on the hard stone wall, a line
of black in the shapes of a horse or an oxen, or some
fornicating bull. Is that how they learned the world
around them? Witnessed something, then ran in to
mark it down? Is that how it happened, oh shyest one -
afraid of faces and afraid of places? You tell me,
and let the rest of the world be dumb and mute.
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