The Birth of Injustice (Brad Leithauser)

Today's poem by Brad Leithauser makes me think of scenes in a movie. I see the neanderthal woman. I see her burying her 3 still-born or otherwise deceased children. I see her sadness, her inability to say why it is sad (why this sadness out of so much harshness). I can even see her, at the end, simply appreciating the simple pleasures in a day (the warmth of the sun on her chest).

Life is mostly harsh ('life is nasty, brutish and short'?) and that is the injustice? Or maybe the poem is saying that life is incredibly harsh and that the injustice is that every day leads you into optimism with some small gesture of pleasure.

Any way, it paints a bleak picture of the life of our ancestors (and of us).

Favorite line: "it's dawn, or dusk, no language for/ origins or ends, and yet the sun / is moving"