Ongoing 11

The next picture in the book shows a number of people, clearly archaeologists, standing around looking into a hole. I got no real inspiration from it until by chance I saw a TV program that my father was watching, something called "A Victorian Farm". In this program a group of people have been living as their Victorian forebears would have lived. It set me wondering whether in a hundred years they will be making programs about how we live now, and that in turn set me on the track that led me to this free verse poem.

These were the ways of the ancients

These were the ways of the ancients
-----they built cities to gather the people
-----and walls and fences to separate them;
-----they lived all together and all alone

These were the ways of the ancients
-----they accumulated tokens of wealth
-----mistaking them for tokens of worth;
-----consumed by their consumerism

These were the ways of the ancients
-----some chose their dictators by ballot
-----some allowed their dictators to choose them;
-----all followed their dictators dictats

These were the ways of the ancients
-----they worshipped strange disparate gods
-----and mocked each others' stranger pieties;
-----all would be saved and all damned

These were the ways of the ancients
-----they filled their lives with sound and light
-----their bodies with alcohol and drugs;
-----they were stimulated and stupefied

These were the ways of the ancients
-----they reached for peace by waging war
-----measured success by counting corpses;
-----their passions were primitive, they were not us

These were the ways of the ancients