My People

In the real beginning, before the Word cavorted,

That vast dumb completion was enough

For everybody, even my people, suffering

(Or so we've always said) from the get‑go,

when Askance begat Bewilder,

That swirling amniotic sea needing a spark

To tart up its salts, and compel molecules to rub

Against themselves for warmth; and some yielded,

And some yoked, swapping simple recipes of spit;

so out of Bewilder, Churlish;
out of Dicey, Errant, who begat Fallow.

Brutal litho‑years waited on the shore. Great beasts,
Not my uncles, lumbered through the forests, overeating.
The sense of change was born and just in time,
But not for my people, scholars of the Mud and the Stick.

And from Garrulous sprung Hungry.

The tools my people had, they have always blamed.

At first fire was beyond them, they thought iron was too heavy,

and silver was nice, but on other people.

For hundreds of years my people could be counted on –

indolent bearing Jabbering, sire of Killjoy ‑

To pay lip service in communal gatherings

To new advances, the sharp and tempered, the cured,

But then they always hightailed it back to the cave,

To the stone axes they were afraid to throw away.

Laid‑low begat Mumbles;

Lagging behind the great movements

(The Age of Reason was uniquely hard on them),

They grew nostalgic for the atrocious, clinging

To the shirtwaists of the household gods.

Out of Nugatory, Oh‑Well Was Whelped,

Hence Persnickety, On Quotable, On Rueful!

Records were kept, but always my people

Outquizzled the chiseled, and derided

What was inscribed: they were kohl‑eyed, clanking,

Agrarian, in robes and muslin, layered and unlayered;

Slavering passed into Torpid, then Unctuous;

And thus has kept the secret of our history,

Flowing like a warm springs of obscure origin;

The narrow path to it overgrown so lushly

Even our weeds claim famous ancestors:

Virulent, Wan, X‑ed and Yammering,

All born within my memory;

And this was revealed to me in my time;

I have pieced together this history

That needs now disappear: for with my people

Words that last crowd the living, in this case

My own issue, known as Zow‑ee!