After Hugo Rheinhold’s Affe mit Schädel
An ape holds a human skull
and contemplates it
face to face like Hamlet
absorbed in his
existential moment.
Hardly 12 inches tall,
cast in bronze,
the ape sits on a stack of books,
one spine inscribed “Darwin,”
who noticed in apes
the human resemblances.
Now we know how
some of us sprouted from Africa,
the migrations branching
like a tree—
north, east, and west.
In the branching,
some encountered small bands
of Neanderthals.
Others found Denisovans.
Who’s to judge
what they did,
mother or father,
their descent?
As sheer urge would have it,
they live on,
genetic variants,
carrying the most intimate
fruit of knowledge.
