Memory Cave by Yusef Komunyakaa

Memory Cave 

A tallow worked into a knot

of rawhide, with a ball of waxy light

tied to a stick, the boy

scooted through a secret mouth

of the cave, pulled by the flambeau

in his hand. He could see

the gaze of agate eyes

& wished for the forbidden

plains of bison & wolf, years

from the fermented honey

& musty air. In the dried

slag of bear & bat guano,

the initiate stood with sleeping

gods at his feet, lost

in the great cloud of their one

breath. Their muzzles craved

touch. How did they learn

to close eyes, to see into

the future? Before the Before:

mammon was unnamed & mist

hugged ravines & hillocks.

The elders would test him

beyond doubt & blood. Mica

lit the false skies where

stalactite dripped perfection

into granite. He fingered

icons sunlight & anatase

never touched. Ibex carved

on a throwing stick, reindeer

worried into an ivory amulet,

& a bear’s head. Outside,

the men waited two days

for him, with condor & bovid,

& not in a thousand years

would he have dreamt a woman

standing here beside a man,

saying, “This is as good

as the stag at Salon Noir

& the polka-dotted horses.”

The man scribbles Leo loves

Angela below the boy’s last bear

drawn with manganese dioxide

& animal fat. This is where

sunrise opened a door in stone

when he was summoned to drink

honey wine & embrace a woman

beneath a five-pointed star.

Lying there beside the gods

hefty & silent as boulders,

he could almost remember

before he was born, could see

the cliff from which he’d fall.