Page 110

The poem questions the idea of progress by mocking a departure from the caves that still leaves everyone frightened, arguing, and bound by old habits.

Addressing a "new you," the speaker treats escape from the caves as less impressive than it sounds. Fear, protection, gendered ritual, and group submission remain, so the supposed advance feels cosmetic rather than real. The caveman setting works like a crude origin scene, suggesting that whatever has changed on the surface, human behavior still circles the same old enclosure.

'the new you' needles the idea of progress: 'your getting away from the caves' yet still 'frightened with protection,' ending not in ascent but 'until we all lay down'. The page is good band but legible.

The poem deflates the evolutionary upward-narrative. It admits 'the caves were good' and measures the supposed advance as tiny -- 'the hair was only as long as the beginning' -- so little has actually changed. The domestic scene seals it: 'the women smiled, then softly ate / While you argued and washed their hands with men,' the old gendered ritual intact, before everyone lies down again rather than standing up into something new. The fragmentary, question-laced opening ('why do you think it necessary,' 'can you believe in the caves') keeps the address skeptical. Source wording 'your getting' is preserved verbatim, not corrected to 'you're'.