Never Going to Work Again

Don’t you wonder if the gone
Hominins had secret tricks,
Adaptations that doomed them?

Were the rugged archaics
Such individualists
Their small group size undid them?

Maybe the Neanderthals
Stuck with unfashionable
Toolkits that worked well, since they

Were too damned smart to copy
To the point of contagion
And complicated culture

The way cousin sapiens
Did. Maybe the last ones died
Without ever regretting

This, without any regrets
About anything they did,
And maybe that was the trick

That satisfied and doomed them,
All those at-peace-with-themselves
Archaics of the fossil

Record—they knew how to be
Animals still when human.
That was never going to work.