Despite technology and a way of life that would surely resemble science fiction to my parents' and grandparents' generation, we nevertheless retain certain links with our distant ancestors: our propensity to wage war, our tribalism, our innate fear of the dark and our efforts to conquer that fear.
Each generation, it seems, plays that same bedtime game with their children: the age-old pastime of creating shadow-animals on a bedroom wall by the light of a bedside lamp.
SHADOWPLAY
The shadow-creatures conjured there
on bedrooms walls, the dove, the hare,
by fathers, mothers, dextrously,
for young children, must surely be
no different from the shadow-beasts
that shamans, tribal-chiefs and priests
made dance, by firelight, on cave walls
while others, crouched in skins and shawls,
knelt silent, in a state of bliss,
enthralled by magic such as this.
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