Giants in Twilight

"Giants in Twilight"

by Jordan S. Bassior

(c) 2006, 2011

They stand in twilight.

Great gray giants, battleships of flesh

Living cruisers of the land

Trunks questing, tusks tossing

They cross the veldt.

Listen!

You can feel their rumbles

Too deep to hear

The air trembles

With their slow calls.

They move as families

Walking to waterholes

Stripping the forests

Remaking the land.

Dominance herds them

Memory guides them

Love, it unites them

On their endless quest.

What do they think

What do they feel

What do they know

In those vast brains?

Do they remember?

Once, they feared nothing,

Roamed Pliocene plains

Vanished forests of old

Five continents theirs.

See little man-apes

Squealing in terror

Fleeing the rush

Of a calf’s playful charge.

Time passed.

Now there is fear

Now there is fire

Now there is shouting

And stabbing of spears

See now the man-apes

Armed with their making

Not quite so little

Masters of all.

Time has passed.

Now see the giants

Shrunken in numbers

Wander the landscape

Last of their kind.

They know the fear

They know the fire

They know the fierce

Stutter of guns.

Do we remember?

It took courage

To slay the giants

Armed with nothing

But torch and spear

It takes no courage

To slay the giants

Riding a jeep with

Machine-gun in hand.

There is honor

In slaying a giant

Risking your life

To feed your kin.

There is no honor

In slaying a giant

Running no risk

For the ivory trade.

If we slay giants

Without mortal reason

We do not grow

To giants ourselves.

When we slay giants

When we slay beauty

For nothing but greed

More the dwarfs we.

END.