RAPE OF THE TAUNG CHILD

2,000,000 BCE

Just three,

she is always so quick

to run back to the clan:

immature, in fact,

but with a body

equipped

for the scald of the veld.

Watch jackal,

she is warned:

baboon, also.

It knows its trick

and its teeth

are long.

Her dark nails

worry

at the clay.

The mother and two aunties

in their oestrus

are harvesting a patch.

They bicker

with a patriarch

who services their hour.

*

He drops

to his lodestone

like the lightning flash:

a wing-wide

visitation

from above:

blotches and bars

underneath

and

extreme feathers

frilling.

She

tries to run,

but his talons

are anchored

in her skull.

The raptor

jumps and jostles

over her cries.

The mentors quail

before this sky-bird's

haughty snark.

Her

last view

is in terror

before small legs

collapse.

She's sucked

into the vortex

of a bright

and curious

stare.

*

He enters her

at will

with claw

and keyhole-cutting

beak

rips out

her eye-balls

not-yet-unfolded uterus

and gut

then freights

her tasselled residues

to cram

his gaping young.

*

In their Australopithecine way

the elders are bereft

by the exaction

of a sacrifice.

read on Bush Radio, Cape Town: 2 July 2006