The caveman at the fire sings out fear

In the livingness there is never no fear –
there is only greater fear and lesser fear.
I am the singer of fear.

In the cave, when the sun has stolen the light
and hidden it in the unworld underfoot,
there is a lesser fear

than outside
where the moon, with its changing shapes
like mothering women
and its drawing-down of the great waters
at the edges of the yellow sand like women bleeding,
streams its white light with shallow shadows
where the creatures lurk;

than outside
where the unnumbered fireflies of stars
stream their waterfalls of silver with dim patterns
for the creatures to lose themselves among.

Yet, when outside nor sun nor moon nor fireflies
cast away their light and the creatures
let themselves be heard and smelt but never seen,
there is the greatest fear.

When the men and boys take sharpened stones to run the beasts
and the women and girls take skins to pack their picked red berries in,
I feed the woodflame fire and sing out fear.

Outside the cave is fear:
the sun’s fire is fierier far than the woodflame fire;
the cold makes rock of water we no longer drink but suck
like children at the mother-breast in burning nibbles;
rain drips like mist in stone, stinging in stampedes of gnats;
great trees of fire tongue the sky and beast-roars rip its skin.

Outside the cave is fear:
there the beasts sleep and yawn and stretch and rise and lurch
and lurk and stalk and prowl and pause to pounce;
they purr and whine and mewl and growl and yap and bark and bay and roar
and show their pad and paw and claw and horn and tooth and tongue and throat;
some slip and slide and slither on their bellies like small babies do,
and hiss and spit like harpies with their backs against sharp rock.

Outside the cave is fear:
I am the singer of fear
and I sing out the names of fear.
I name the hotness and the coldness and the wetness and the dryness;
I name the creatures and their sounds and smells and marks.
By naming of the names I take away their force
and their many means to make us mute through fear.

Inside the cave sometimes,
out of reach of the woodflame fire,
a child is snatched silently, serenely,
by the beast that has no name – and the child is seen no more.
This is a great cat that pours dry footmarks in the dust
and bounds in noiseless ecstasy, his voice vast waterfall
that freezes at the kill. He has elephantine teeth –
so say the dead who whisper in the dream –
thick as a woman’s arm, white as the moonbeam’s light.

The beast has no name.
I am the singer of fear
and I sing out the names of fear;
but cannot sing out the beast unnamed.
In and outside the cave, fear stalks untamed – unsung.