Christ! Too! Late!
Before that sandbar, Florida, arose,
Before cold water filled Lake Erie’s deeps,
Before the last two northern glacier flows
Crawled down the top of Europe and left heaps
Of house-sized bounders stranded in peat bogs,
Before the mastodons and mammoths ate
Their last steppe meals, before folk first made clogs
The tribes of Asia lived near Peking’s gate.
Before those paintings on the cavern walls
Of Altamira and Lascaux . . . the stone
Engravings of Australia and the falls
Of Maui’s slopes were in our human zone.
Before the paleontologist, priest
….Or Tall Ships . . . men were thriving in the East.