Lascaux

Cave Drawing to Burger King

By: Jane Hudson - Sep 29, 2014

LASCAUX

They say we are
what we eat.
We romance the burger,
something from old Europe
still lingering like
an etymological drug.

We want to be
free of the body,
beg its forgiveness
for the sin of eating
and move on,
but when we regard
the image of
bison,
the charging longhorn,
the gentle curve
of a back so
carefully remembered
and drawn deep
in a cave long ago,
a bell sounds
an ancient tune
plays upon our collective
longing
beyond memory
but uncanny,
how familiar:

The milk, butter,
cheese, steak,
leather, bone,
the property of herds,
the old west cowboy,
the pagan calf,
Diana, the moon
goddess of horns,
even the silly
and sacred
cows of Hindu India
wandering the cities
afraid of no one.

And finally our own
golden
arches, sublime
in their ubiquity
raising the smoke
of sacrifice
we yield up
to appease our
forgotten Earth.