artifacts

In a glass case, enclosed, displayed,
I saw with horror for the first time,
a ten-year-old observer, that life
was not only strange but dangerous.

Teeth and hanks of hair stared up at me,
a recognizable human figure, a silent
scream across a score of centuries:
Sacrificial Victim, circa 400 BC.

The eyes were gone but the teeth were not,
teeth that had bitten into hunks of meat,
into grains and beans, sustenance,
that had grazed on the lips of a woman.

So what was that world you lived in
under the same old sun and moon,
among rivers and fields and mountains,
human faces, your harsh compelling gods?

My father came along and took my hand.
It does no good to look on these things.
There is nothing we can do, he said,
Not now, not then, not ever.