Pleistoscene

Those people who had nothing but, say, a hunting tool and a lot of ice had poetry, plenty of it, poems and songs for the sake of the life in them. —Marie Ponsot

x
Begging to differ, we have not
An ounce of poetry, no libraries, no bindings,
No sooth-singers, no melting iambs.
After the hunt we fall to the ground
Limb-drained, not a lyrical bone
In our bodies or in our bone-piles.
We do not even have the phrase begging to differ.

We have tools, as you say, and bowls carved
Out of wood, and not enough food, mostly—
We have mastodon fur
And fevered child-sicknesses;
Like you, we have many deaths;
Unlike you, none are suicides.

Because we have no poetry we have no suicides:
But yes, you are right, there is ice:
Endless fields, jagged mountains
Of ice.