Assisi: An Online Journal of Arts & Letters Volume 4, Issues 1 & 2 | Page 53

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LUCILLE LANG DAY

CHILD’S GRAVE AND FINERY
A ten-thousand-year-old grave
of a child about three years old,
covered with ochre dust
and marked with three stones,
nestled in a rock shelter
under an overhanging cliff
in southern France. More
than fifteen hundred beads,
carefully carved from seashells
and animal teeth, adorned his neck,
wrists, elbows, ankles and knees.
Marks inside the beads show
a needle passed through them:
they were sewn onto clothes
that disintegrated long ago.
Scratches and nicks on the outside
imply the child wore these beaded
clothes when he was playing.
Anthropologists say this finery
must signify hereditary social status.
But maybe he was an only child
whose grandmother polished
the beads and sewed them
onto his clothes while his father
hunted and his mother gathered
berries, the way a grandmother
today might knit or crochet
a sweater or blanket. Or maybe
his parents were so broken
by his death that they sewed
all their own beads onto
his burial clothes, so anyone
finding his grave would know
how much he mattered.

!!Assisi!!!47!