IISZ 2018, Challenge #Y

[Lizzie]

Thanks for participating everybody! Here are the results of the challenge:

Original poem:

A Ball

He gives to the chief the head of an enemy
Whom he pounced on in the bushes by a stream
And hefted with his spear.—A scout
From the enemy village. It's a pity
It wasn't possible to capture him alive.
Then he would have been put on the sacrificial altar
And the whole village would have had a feast:
The spectacle of his being killed slowly.
They were rather tiny brown people
Presumably no more than a meter-fifty tall.
What remains of them are some ceramics,
Though they did not know the potter's wheel.
Something else too: found in the tropical jungle
A granite ball, immense, incomprehensible.
How, without knowing iron, could they dress the granite,
Give it a perfectly spheric shape?
They worked it for how many generations?
What did it mean to them? The opposite
Of everything that passes and perishes? Of muscles, skin?
Of leaves crackling in a fire? A lofty abstraction
Stronger than anything because it is not alive?


~Translated from the Polish by Czeslaw Milosz and Robert Hass

vagabond wrote:

Globe

The chief received the cranium,
cut off an intruder from a hostile village.
Hidden in the backwoods near the river
he´d been surprised, and stabbed -
it was a shame, his heart did not keep beating
longer. the whole clan could have celebrated
as the unrelated pulse
was slowly forced to fade.

They were dark-skinned men and women,
none taller than 5 feet.
All that is left of them today
is pottery, crudely shaped,
not smooth like ours, perfected
on the turning wheel;

and an orb,
shaped from magmatic rock, colossal, baffling,     
in the middle of the forest´s wilderness.
They had no metal tools,
could they have carved the mineral
to a flawless globe?
How many sons inherited this task
from countless fathers -
and for what?

Was the orb to them the counterpart
to slowly fading flesh and bones,
to substance eaten by the flames.
Did they see decay reversed?
Was it a solemn metaphor
to invincible defiance, seen
in matter void of life?

CRNDLSM wrote:

Planet

The leader tied up the prisoner,
a feral human in the woods
running with a tribe.
It was good business trading slaves;
everyone in town had a help,
or a pet.
One of them, though, stood out.
One, wouldn't go down...

They were hairy all over,
of all shapes and sizes,
their history hidden behind forbidden lands
extraordinarily sophisticated,
yet dwelling in trees and huts,
not like ours.

The craft:
a talking screen and blinking lights
in the desert.
landed by the first
to teach the natives 
the fruits of evolution.
How many generations have carried this torch
from Caesar I
to bring us here?

Was the craft their excuse
to capture weaker life forms?
To maintain subordination?
Where did the time go
for such significant change?
Rebellion is imminent -
How could it have been any different?

Keith wrote:

Tree Walkers;
The nets finally brought him down
a thrashed catch, snatched for profit
The guards made sure his fists were weak
enough at least for the Captain to chain him.
Still he had to see those eyes, dead pools
for his lost family, boiling at the edges
for his enemy, the Captains smirk faltered.

Tree Walkers they called them and hunted them into slavery, without considering their past. Ignoring their culture and teachings. They assumed limited intellect whilst they abused and destroyed every element of their way of life, enforcing control with  sticks until they bled submission.

The Capsule;
The instruments glowed and crackled
until the back up failed
and the outside came in.
Beyond the scorched desert
sand-dunes quenched
themselves into a foaming ocean.
Only footprints emerged
from the wreckage,
no knuckles trailed
in this century, time
would be rebuilt in his name,
he would teach his own kind
how to fight again.

The capsules irony wasn't lost
it was waiting for its moment
to turn the monitors back on,
a slide show of oppression
conquest and missile massacre.
Evolution only needs quiet.

rayheinrich wrote:

The Sky-Dancers:

The trap had captured them,
the guards had found their weaknesses,
the merchants imprisoned them.
Only their eyes revealed their suffering.

They were enslaved,
their destinations foreign lands.
Their culture destroyed,
and soon forgotten.


The Transporter:

It's clock,
finished counting these many years,
triggered it to life,
told it it was time,
to re-create the Dancers.
Time to release them into a new era,
a world without traps and oppressors;
a fertile land in which to root and grow.