Poem by the Dutch writer Albert Hagenaars, from his three-language collection 'Palawija'

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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