OLD STORY

by James Penha

Mythical Beings May Be Earliest Imaginative Cave Art by Humans: The paintings on an Indonesian island are at least 43,900 years old and depict humanoid figures with animal-like features in a hunting scene. —The New York Times, December 11, 2019. Photo: A humanoid with a bird-like head was among the eight therianthrope figures depicted in a cave painting on the island of Sulawesi. Credit: Ratno Sardi via The New York Times.

I know an anoa
when I see one
even in the oldest
story ever told
on cave walls
in Indonesia. But
the humanoids who
herd or hunt or
beseech the buffalo—
an anoa is a buffalo—
I do not recognize:
therianthropes,
they have beaks
and wiry tails;
they are lithe
for their age, for
forty-four thousand,
only now becoming
chips off the old
blocks of limestone,
a condition I share.


James Penha edits TheNewVerse.News from his home in Indonesia.

THE ANCIENT ART OF HANDS

by James Penha

Cave paintings on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi were found more than 50 years ago, but until now the dates of origin were not known. The art shown here has not been dated, but is stylistically similar to other art in the area now found to be around 40,000 years old. Photograph by Maxime Aubert, Griffith University, Australia via National Geographic, October 8, 2014

The hands of these islands
touch me
forty thousand times,
embrace me at lips of steaming calderas,
hold me aloft their seas,
guide me through deepest caves
with open palms ever daring
to paint
our place here.


James Penha edits The New Verse News. He has lived in Indonesia since 1992.