At the British Museum

Here is the waking from one face
into another. You can count the blows
each side, that chipped straightening
formed by the thought of a line for cutting.

This basalt stone still fits without fuss
in the palm of a hominid hand –
its sharpened edge running forefinger to wrist,
quick to get meat from a bone or smash out marrow fat.

Out of all darkness here is the young sun –
gas, dust, planetesimals, the weight of gravity
pushing its way to the imagining brain,

asymmetrical hemispheres, the thing made
for the future, all utility, beauty and rubble.
This cobble of picked up, cooled lava.

 

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From Magma 95, Architecture

 

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