Thursday, February 19, 2009

The Neanderthal

What can we say about the Neanderthal?
He makes bone and flint tools as precisely as he can.
He is romanced by domestic fire.
He hunts big (or rather, mammoth) game.
Admittedly, he envies his Cro-Magnon progeny,
but he too is a cannibal.

He, if his hyoid can be trusted, has fledgling language skills.
He toys with poetry with each spear toss.
He runs couplets over in his head during the drawn-out defleshing rituals.
Some scholars even claim he discovered the sonnet,
but the evidence is circumstantial.

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