Lightning frightens sun-worshiping creatures
Looking at light perceiving a vital warmth
Impossible to tame by grateful impotence.
Striking the forest, smoke and flames
The habitat heats an instinctive escape.
Only curiosity brings the primitive man
To wonder retrace his steps analyse the fact.
While crowds await in caves he burns,
Learns not to touch the intangible substance.
As storm quiets beings approach ashes
Glittering pieces of orange ignite genius and ideas,
To keep the fire going.
Wood, plants, fats, anything it likes to gulp,
For warmer nights and sleepless guardians.
Meats on flames prevent stomach pains
Engendering longer lives and new beginnings.
Mimicking the story down the line of time
Sounds and gestures inspire kids to play
Monsters of fire with woods and stones,
Frictions and percussions creating sparks.
Lenses, matches, lighters, fossil fuels, coal,
Gas and oil, nuclear power, uranium and thorium,
Houses, roads, cars, trains, planes, spaceships
To root us back to base,
Two hundred and fifty thousand years away.
Energies endlessly mutating, generous givers of nature
Have been, are and will be, renewed again.
Sunlight, wind, rivers and waves, geothermal heat,
Intelligence makes space for sensitivity to reunite.
[Featured painting: The School of Athens by Raffaello, 1510 ca., affresco in Stanza della Segnatura in the Apostolic Palace of the Vatican]