4.8

The full past is this:
One story is about avoiding death. Another
about a tree. One prophet saw fire.
Another received pain in the opposite hand
as the word. There were wars. There
was the thing called evolution and the heart was
revealed not to be the mind and the body
has proved replaceable. Hurt is instituted rather
than experienced and the disavowal of
torture comes and goes in waves as it is
performed by others. People always danced
and then they flew: now the thumbspan is a wing.
It is all of it perhaps the wrong way round
or else there should be a term for what
comes next that is not future. That word
is about making when the past is clearly
a spear--the most rudimentary of our
weapons of trajectory.