The Mind in the Cave (2)

When we speak of them,we have to say
perhaps, or probably, or almost certainly.
But almost, almost certainly

they understood what we have called
acoustics. Painted their vibrant stags
and bison where the sound was good.

And the drums would beat, and the pulse
of the mountain would respond.
The hollow bones would bell and whinny
and the watchful stag and horse
would say they understood.

We try to read a wisdom
never meant for us: unearth
their shards, and dust them off,
and guess; decode and annotate
their wordless images, read them
as metaphor. We cannot hear

the truth they told to one another
against the freezing wind, the days when hunters
returned empty-handed, malevolence unseen beyond
the community of the campfire: we speak
to the living Earth. It answers us.


The Mind in the Cave (1)

When we speak of them, we have to say
perhaps, or probably, or almost certainly.
But almost, almost certainly

they understood what we have called
acoustics. Painted their vibrant stags
and bison where the sound was good.

And the drums would beat, and the pulse
of the mountain would respond.
The hollow bones would bell and whinny
and the watchful stag and horse
would say they understood.

They left no books. We must unearth
their shards, and dust them off,
and guess. We must try to read
their useful, exquisite art,
know them as best we can.

Could they have taught us
in a way we could understand
how to fuse their great metaphor
into a truth? For them, there was

no make-believe: the caves
are not ‘alive’, they tell us,
with the sound of music.

The whole round Earth
is alive, they say, and answers us.