NEANDERTHALS

There’s a deep warm cave

inside of us

where a last remnant

of Neanderthals

still lives

this is not an elegy

nor has deluded nostalgia

won another day

they were always repulsive

to us

and we were poison

to them

but we never wanted them

utterly gone

not before they told us

who they were

and why they knew

the dead must be blessed

we disturbed them

with their hands red

not from a bloody run-in

with a giant bear or each other

we disturbed them

with their hands ochre-red

preparing their dead

bigger and shiny-skinned

we yowled, threw smart stones

and gnawed their marrow-rich

inferior bones

we did dreadful things

we learnt nothing from them.

* * *

What was I trying to learn

whose bones was I gnawing

as I sat last week

on the bottom steps

of my old friend’s

empty rotting mourning

house

crumbling down into the water

of my childhood’s ancient mangroves?

I rocked on the salty tide

of the oyster-rimmed bay

alive and ageing and sad.

And I waited

for one of the Old Hairies

to brave the long hard climb

out

and teach me how

to rest my dead

and keep burning.