The Arrival of Civilisation

 

The mangled corpse: bludgeoned; skull gaping,

gore-spattered, blood-soaked. That intimacy with

slaughter, we call it savagery; their basic weaponry,

rock and branch; that engagement with violence.

And later, with the wielding of swords, the blood-bath

battles; that crush of thrashing bodies, flailing armies,

harvesting death; we call it barbarism, that intimacy

with carnage: the hacking, slitting, piercing of bodies.

To the release of rockets that kill, maim and demolish from

distance; no blood-stained tunics nor eyeballing death;

we call it civilisation: that delivery of devastation and death

with corporate efficiency, distribution worthy of the 21^st century.