Lascaux, by Kate Deimling

Hall of the Bulls in the Lascaux cave (France) Upper Paleolithic era (17,000 to 12,000 years ago). Photo by Ahmed Bayes (Bangladesh) contemporary (CC BY 2.0)

Lascaux

All is shadow until
light flickers or flashes
and stone walls quicken
with a galloping procession:
 
cantering antelope with spiked horns,
horse's sun-soaked brown flank,
spotted bull staring at its spindly-legged twin
with rolling muscular middle.
A bristly-maned horse is dwarfed
by a massive bull bowing his head. 
 
Inside the twisting corridors
of the cave, one room has been named
apse, another nave,
linking this house of creatures
born of the flourish of a brush
in a dark time beyond memory
 
with skyward thrusting stone
harboring in glowing glass
a man holding on his lap a lamb,
hovering above him, a dove.

Kate Deimling

Kate Deimling is a translator and writes poetry and fiction. Her poems have recently appeared in Rockvale Review and Steam Ticket. She has translated six books from French on topics ranging from Renaissance art to the wine industry. A native New Orleanian, she lives in Brooklyn, New York with her family.