Primitive gods
I was alone in the clouds,
the Carbon I mine to possess.
Through my jelly binoculars
I watched my former mates
kill mammoths, strike flints,
runt till their hides caught flames.
I listened to their hobo gallop,
Cutting – cut,
Hanging – hanged,
Slaying – slain.
By and by
they learned to walk straight,
put on clothes.
The era of taskless lives came to an end.
They got homework,
to each their own:
differentiated cloud instruction,
from learning some self-control
to inventing the alphabet.
Sometimes they were cold and homesick
knowing not what they missed.
They found cloud scraps
in the nooks of their dim wits,
stitched them together
into frazzled comforting blankets:
primitive gods.
Poor sods had no way to see
they were snuggling up
in their own pasty echoes.
Svetlana Lavochkina
Novelist, poet and poetry translator
Leipzig, Germany.
