earth child

by David Grubb
Neolithic
Did they dance
as they laid you in earth
ready for future time,
or were they ashamed
of the large head and
strange sounds?
Laid down in darkness
beyond snow and wind,
a silence suspending all
that they might know,
these cautious rituals
of dream and bone.
What words did they
give their gods
as you lay forgotten;
and what words do
we greet you with
and why no name?
It is the same moon,
the same way of winds
and when snow comes
we are silent and alone
and nobody enters
the place you inhabit.
Sometimes you appear
in rain or when cloud
cuts across sun and there
are always people who
attempt to tell your story
giving you a date and name
which will not work,faltering
like prayers to unknown gods
and their forged territories,
even when we have hollows
and scatterings and places that the
sun will not let alone,our seasons
sensing lost songs of your hiding.
Were they ashamed of the large head
or the way that the flames entered you?