Zep Tepi

Just yesterday, the ice
And the mammoths were gone,
The bipedal apes winnowed
And blended to a single race

Fanned out across the continents,

Just yesterday, the first
Occasion of farming, strange
What a miracle and a burden
The hard work of that harvest
Became, over and over

Again, abandoned and
Rediscovered so many times
Before getting its grip
On the most of the earth,
Apocalypse and window,

Just yesterday, opened
Along the flooded Nile,
Desertification all around,
Nobility and slavery, us, today,
As we began just yesterday.