With these auspicious lines, the poet commences
The earliest poem of the Australopithecus anamensis.
Or were you first? Did those acuminated senses
Place the objects of the world within your bars,
And did that mouth of yours grunt out an ode
To grubs and berries, stones and stars?
Should your genus, like mine, count out the metered time,
Then surely I am far from the second.
Still I praise your face,
Sister, mother, with estimations grossly reckoned.
Show my your brow of yearning bold!
And for all that you have yet to make –
Spear-tip, fire, blacktop, rake –
I’d extoll your rugged feet,
And every setting where these miracles meet the ground,
Without pretenses. By words unsaid, by years and menses,
You and I are bound. And there are no fences,
At last, where we sing together in the round.