A fulgurous generation arises, wanders
from the safe cave --

insert cave here, its small hearth, troglodyte actors.

There seems no reason to leave the fire pit, the known
wall signed with soot and handprint, to desert leaping

animals, their delicate horns --
imagine the usual white chalk bison, the dripping --

or to turn away from static Horus, hawk-God, pictured 
with his fine-brushed line of beak, his human

hieroglyph of feet.  There's no easy explanation for
exiting a chapel busy with icons, an Onion dome.

Why lay down Bibles, refuse Venerable Bede with his stylus
or trade Chautauqua lectures for the Lone Ranger --

as shown, only Clayton Moore will do --
or Carnegie, any library, for the black and white

flicker of GE Theatre, the Zenith eyeball TV, 1952.

Once any of this happens, days can rise up on their hind legs
like dogs walking to promote a life, not rational but diurnal --

See lavish styles emerge, recede, viz. lightning.

Meanwhile, blinked out of a customary trance, strangers 
travel to the edge of the now-known. Under what spells

do they learn anew the alchemy of hand, eye or contrive 
to fabricate being in shifting

image on digital walls, novel, supple, 
able to convey us across the millennial hinge?