It was half dark then.
We walked when we were awake,
hoping to find the everlasting
day, warm and bright.
The moon our lamp and we
did not know why or how
it got there nor why
it was so stingy with us.
Was a long time before
the first fires, still longer
until we took the leaves and branches
and lit them up, threw our heavy coats off and still longer
until we stored the dried up brew
from the massive cups of water
we had to drink against our wills,
our platforms sloshing, animals rutting
and most of the draught too bitter to swallow.
Still it was even longer
before we said our graces
so intent we were, on survival,
our eyes glazed over at the flickers,
no need for memory or prediction,
which came next. Our pictures
made of blood and boiled roots
splayed lonely in the sooted caves
once we left them but we hoped,
we did hope for a companion
who would search us out on our trek
which we called with our tongue
the bitter enemy or simply,
the deliverance. Idiosyncratic stories
cropped up and helped us to settle
the places of reap and sow. Fighting
began slowly over putrefying fats,
black pools of no return that lit the way.
Cess pools of death and destruction
where each fire was a tiny star
between fantastic distances,
each star a little soul or a village.
The fuel of the fire, man
it said. Some of us listened
and some of us were instructed
by the melting stones appearing
from the sky in strange, indefinite interims.
We hoped to catch the brittle cracks
between the smokes above our heads
to no avail. We named the hopeless condition
war and the fullness of our caves peace.
Language a weak reminder
for the darkness we thought to leave behind.
