If aliens landed here,

On this seaside promenade 

In these gardens, in this park

Not in daylight but in dark...

 

Without any of the usual preliminaries, 

you understand.  No “scan 

the surface for life signs, ensign."

No knowledge of exobiology,

no undercover ethnography,

no detailed understanding of our anatomy 

from centuries of careful abduction and dissection.

 

Would they think they we were elongated quadrupeds,

and that these were the statues we built to our illustrious dead?

​

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END