III: ANCESTOR
Behind glass I see you then,
as a copy in hardened synthetic resin
of the skull fragments compressed to stone:
Meganthropus Paleojavanicus.
Gone for good are the hair-covered skin,
the flat breasts with their long nipples
and the short hoarse sounds of the tongue
in which you warned, made love, died,
but not the strings of notional DNA
still spiralling in the woman with whom hand
in hand I stand before the dark showcase
and reconstruct your heavy features.
Your luxuriant world with predecessors
of elephant, buffalo and crocodile
is imperceptibly slowly buried
beneath layer upon layer of sediment.
After hundreds of thousands of years of waiting
you lift up your once so strong hands
of what is now caked grit.
reach out towards me
and want my mouth to breathe
life into her. I incorporate you
when our descendants survive
according to a theory far from proven yet.
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