IN THE NEOLITHIC AGE

In the Neolithic Age savage warfare did I wage

For food and fame and wooly horses' pelt.

I was singer to my clan in that dim, red Dawn of Man,

And I sang of all we fought and feared and felt.

Yea, I sang as now I sing, when the Prehistoric spring

Made the piled Biscayan ice-pack split and shove;

And the troll and gnome and dwerg, and the Gods of Cliff and Berg

Were about me and beneath me and above.

But a rival, of Solutré, told the tribe my style was outré --

'Neath a tomahawk, of diorite, he fell.

And I left my views on Art, barbed and tangled, below the heart

Of a mammothistic etcher at Grenelle.

Then I stripped them, scalp from skull, and my hunting dogs fed full,

And their teeth I threaded neatly on a thong;

And I wiped my mouth and said, ``It is well that they are dead,

``For I know my work is right and theirs was wrong.''

But my Totem saw the shame; from his ridgepole shrine he came,

And he told me in a vision of the night:--

``There are nine and sixty ways of constructing tribal lays,

``And every single one of them is right!''

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typeset by George R. Welch
http://leona.tamu.edu/george/