Niall O'Sullivan – Poet

human evolution poems

I am currently researching and writing a project about human evolution which should hopefully result in a new book of poems and a one man show on the subject. Below is a sample of some works in progress.

Prologue

You are probably unprepared for this journey,
dear reader, I have doubtless caught you
in some treacherous parallax between Eden
and that Paleoanthropological Abbey Road:
from knuckle walking George, crouching Paul,
slouching Ringo to upright, spear-wielding John.
Weigh both in your hands, in one you hold
the myth of the fall from perfection, in the other
the myth of the inexorable rise towards it.
All I can do is urge you to cast both aside
and then, through some unexplained magic
or alien technology, open the latch of your skull,
scoop out your gleaming brain and serve it,
neurons-a-sparking, into your upturned palms
so you can look at it, yes look at it with eyes
that are still in your skull, remember this is a poem.

Weighs hardly anything doesn’t it? Feel the texture,
some say it’s like porridge, others like cream cheese,
some are convinced it’s like tofu
though everyone agrees that it’s kind of… rubbery.

This has been called the second most complicated object
in the universe, with the universe itself coming first,
this is what Aristotle thought was an organ for cooling the
blood, and two millennia later, we still know sod all about it.

Now see this, this is the brain of a chimpanzee, see the difference?
The bit at the bottom, the white wrinkly bulb, that’s the cerebellum
it’s almost the same on both of them, but the big difference is here,
this grey, folded stuff on the top, the neo-cortex, that’s latin
for new bark, it’s just a thin layer on the chimp brain,
but look at yours, inches thick and all folded over just so
it can fit in the confines of your already humungous cranium.

Seven million years have passed since the last ancestor
of these two brains existed, but the work that really
sets them apart only began about two million years ago.
If you need to replace that idea of the ever-upright parade
from ape to man with anything, try this,
think of those two million years and this cortex
growing to monstrous proportions, folding over itself
silently within the darkness of the skull

and with it
the rising of stone tools, wooden spears, carved antlers
cave art, red ochre, agriculture, animal husbandry
calligraphy, metallurgy, democracy, theatre,
the combustion engine, electricity, aviation
genetics, plutonium enrichment, information technology,
Artificial intelligence, Hollyoaks, Facebook…

all within two million years, that’s nothing,
not even a click of the Uranium clock.
See, beautiful isn’t it, once you get over the shock
you’re left with a dizzy euphoria about
what you really are and your place within the cosmos,

and now, I think you’re ready to meet your ancestors
we’ll take those first timid steps with Lucy
before launching into a savannah sprint with Homo Ergaster
we’ll heed the call of the East with Homo Erectus
feast on some rare roast mammoth with the Neanderthals
place a Cro Magnon hand for posterity on a cave wall
before finally becoming Homo Sapiens
CanofStellaWhileWatchingtheMatchicus.
Ready? Fantastic, but before we set off, please,
just put that brain away, you look ridiculous.

Dart

2,500,000 BC

This isn’t the scene you’re thinking of,
so don’t go humming those opening bars of Strauss
because it ain’t going to happen, well, maybe later.
There are no storm clouds, the sky is a clear blue,
there are no rocky mountains or caves,
no accumulations of bones attest
to some new master of the terrain,
though what we can see is a group of apelike forms,
not too different to today’s lot until, occasionally,
one stands bolt upright to venture a slow loping
gait from one isolated tree to the next
foraging for fruits as oblivious ungulates trot
unmolested between them.
A mother rises up to scan the grass,
perhaps for the low slung gaze of a leopard
her infant clings to the fur on her back
as she surveys the plane, her body tensed
with a readiness to flee, not a drop
of fight in her,
satisfied, she lowers herself
fingers the ground for a nibble
and with that exposes her back, her child, to the sky

it only takes a second for talons to clutch and snatch,
by the time she knows what has happened
her child is already a winged shadow
being swallowed by the sun.

It is at this moment, when the scream
ripples though the whole troop,
pain stitching their body-lives together,
that we may see a trace of ourselves
all that’s missing is the fleet foot
the killer touch, the thoughts that
can burn a city to a cinder.

1925 AD

When he found that ape-child’s skull in Taung
and pointed out the central position of the foramen magnum
how the spine entered the skull in a fashion
suggesting habitual bipedalism
and furthermore added that this was our ancestor
from Africa of all the bloody places, sure, we laughed,
for years we said it all started in the Far East
and when Dart came along with his austalopithecus
africanus, his essay written but weeks after the find,
we scoffed and waited for the sites in Java to cough
up another exhibit for our canon, but Africa prevailed
Oldovai Gorge yawned open and spewed forth its treasure
we chowed down on humble pie.
So, when he started crashing anthropology lectures
in a rabid fury, extolling theories about the killer ape,
bone-age technologies of weapons, plates and drinking cups…
when he heralded the new species of australopithecus prometheus
the fire wielding ape…. when he sketched a history
of ancient mining in pre-historic Africa, set up by the peoples of the East,
even though there wasn’t a shred of evidence, we endured his rages
we indulged the thesis, we bit our tongues
we had been wrong before…

1967 AD

Dan the ape-man is glad to be away
from the studio’s glaring lamps
though his costume is still hot as hell
the tremor of the wind on the latex
covering his face provides a limited relief
a hundred yards away red buses and 2CV’s
buzz to and fro, oblivious to this echo
of history within a field in Elstree,
the bearded director grabs a hand held camera,
yells action, tells the ape-man to beat all manner
of crap out of the warthog skulls strewn about him
all that matters is to catch that furry
weapon-wielding hand against the blue sky

chunks of skull fly all over the place
one fragment almost taking out the great director
and the sound man grins when he thinks
of how this mess might confuse some
post apocalyptic palaeontologist, and suddenly
the director has an idea, tells the ape-man
to throw the bone as high in the air as he can
and when someone asks what happens after that
the director grins and whispers everything

okay, you can hum those bars of Struass now,
if you still really need to.

Homo Erectus Catches the Northern Line Home

“Suitably clothed and with a cap to obscure his low forehead and beetle brow, he would probably go unnoticed in a crowd today.”
Richard Leakey and Alan Walker quoted from National Geographic

“In his eyes was not the expectant reserve of a stranger but that deadly unknowing I have seen in a lion’s blank yellow eyes.”
Alan Walker, palaeontologist.

“…I would put money on him not having a blank animal stare. We would have recognised him as a fellow human being.”
Leslie Aiello, anthropologist.

It doesn’t matter how we got here.
After a day’s work, the nagging of tabloids,
on this vicious, thoughtless urge towards home,
our thoughts are far from our origins.

All that matters is that you are here,
travelling faster than your species ever dreamed
through dark echoing tunnels, over stern iron bridges,
among this gathering of tiredness and apathy.
With a stolen wallet in your jeans,
a baseball cap disguising your brow ridge,
you’ve not caused much of a stir among humanity’s menagerie.

Your tall, strong body, your stare
that some have conjectured to be similar
to a lion peering blankly from the darkness
has been sufficient in fending off muggers and charity workers.
Yet the glares you have already endured
from well dressed suburbanites, pinstripe gents,
has been enough to teach the survival technique
of staring at the floor.

You are playing this, brilliantly, by ear.
Like the best of us, you have no immediate plans.
Among the lower echelons of this fierce, busy society
a non-commital grunt will get you far.
You may even find a companion, a mate
among this melee of highly strung, flat faced creatures
and tip-toe away into the gene pool’s frequencies.

The dying sun flares back at you
from the windows of passing buildings.
The train is coming to a halt,
the doors about to slide open.
You stand as much of a chance as any of us.
One might venture the hard work is already over.
Now remember to swipe your Oyster at the exit barrier.

Fossil Hunting

The most important thing is to occupy each moment,
the epiphany will come later on. If not, no matter.
Calmly, I tread across the land-slip
past newly dead trunks of wild-seeded trees,
as rocks skitter past I wonder
if some locals are playing a game of Tourist Tenpin.

Come Charmouth, my routine is this–
slowly walk,
not looking too hard, yet wary not to daydream,
peering upwards, now and again, at the crumbling rock face
to contemplate the enormity of time,
the illustrated aeons, our own lifespans
not even a centimetre on the face of that lofty clock–
before looking back down, retuning to the minute.

Later, while walking the Lyme town pavement,
I’m disturbed to realise I can’t stop looking for fossils–
An Ammonite! No, just a lump of dislodged tarmac.
Trilobite! Dog’s muck imprinted by someone’s boot heel.

I laugh at myself until the truth of it slams home,
that I have re-ignited the hardware
of my hunter gatherer ancestors,
who read the news of the day from the ground, just like this,
be it for droppings and prints of their herded prey
or the dread sign of predators, rival tribes . . .
I have been gazing into the deep past of life itself
through the lens of how the first humans experienced the world–
Boom! Epiphany.

My world changes that little bit, forever,
and I hope that this viewpoint will stay a while
before I return to London, the throngs and fumes,
the hidden stars, my post-agricultural stupor.

Lyme Regis, 23/5/09