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The Walrus

" The Iron Age . Hesiod believed he and his contemporaries were in the Iron Age, an age of desolation, destruction and pain. Humans would fight against each other and would only care of themselves. Because of lack of shame and indignation, humankind would destroy itself, and the gods would abandon them."
 

 

In the Rotunda is a walrus skull

a fossil found in Yorkshire gravel

 

Its brain filled up a cavity -

size of a dog - the solid bone

 

for slamming others of its kind - as yard long tusks

go ripping down through wrinkled hides .

A piggy eye

surveys the heaving beach of water wives .

 

Those were the days of tusks - the mastodon

had tusks that raked along the earth .

The narwhal grows a tooth to needle spike

for feeling out the fractures in the ice

and then it carves a hole and breathes .

The giant cats with sabre teeth

pounce heavily on giant sloth

on plains awash with purple sage

and armadillos roll along

Like tanks

and tiny horses in uncounted herds

- defenceless - oh but they can run -

and one by one they lose their toes for speed

as they go sweeping over Oregon

Is this the Golden Age ?

 

 No -  that had gone

with soaring reptiles sailing skies

in ecstasies of oxygen

and iridescent dragonflies

patrolling swamps like pearly swans .

Diplodocus with grace and size

queens of the swamp with massive thighs

and mammals scurry , lurk and hide

from razor beaked pteranodon

 

I say it was the Cambrian

the species-teaming sea with gentle waves

the garden of inventiveness

spread out beneath an early sun

when our first mother crawled ashore and learned to gulp in air

 

So long ago .

 

This is the Iron Age for sure .

It’s ruled by new and shiny gods

with scum of jumped-up monkeys - scampering

across the Earth

and everywhere

and tampering

with That and That and Everything

 

and chat chat chat chat chattering

 

This Age - Beware             

 

    

 

 

Scarborough  09/12/2018