On an Ancient Carving

Ivory broken from a mammoth tooth

and shaped some forty thousand years ago

into the goddess-body of the earth.

Revealed: the wide, child-bearing hips,

the narrow portal through which life

arrives, the bounty of her breasts,

and all the lines that time has etched

across her skin, like surface scratches

on a glacier-driven lump of stone.

And we, the wastrels of a golden age,

do well to stand in awe before

this wise, indomitable ancestor –

our Mother Earth who gives us everything

and is the goddess who will forgive nothing.

Lindsay Clarke

Venus Hohle Fels – On an Ancient Carving by Hilde Jensen – copyright © 2019 Universität Tübingen