The first display case
holds a stone.
On it we note
a faint scratch.
A matter of chance,
some people say.
The second display case
shows a piece of frontal bone.
It cannot be proven—
is it animal or human.
Bones are bones.
Let’s move on.
Nothing here.
What endures—
just the old resemblance
between a spark struck from a stone
and a star.
Severed by centuries
the space of comparison
remains the same.
The space
that lured us from the species,
led us from the sphere of sleep
before we knew the word sleep,
in which whatever lives
is born for always
and dies without death.
The space
that turned our head human,
from a spark to a star,
from one to many,
from each to all,
from temple to temple,
and that which has no eyelids
opened in us.
The sky rose
from a stone.
A stick branched
into a thicket of endings.
The snake raised its fangs
from the bundle of its reasons.
Time swirled
in the rings of a tree.
Howls of one awakened
multiplied in echoes.
The first display case
holds a stone.
The second display case
shows a piece of frontal bone.
We left the animals behind.
Who will leave us.
Through which resemblance.
What compared to what.