At the British Museum - Shakespeare's Monkeys

The repetition of "sun" in S2L4 doesn't really work for me. Though (I assume) you intended the double use to be a play on words, they come across as awkward repetition. Perhaps something more like, "...striding the earth." would get your message across.

I found "Life demands our time" odd at first, but the more I reread it, the better I liked it. I also liked your repeated use of images relating to light: Sun, glaze, pale (a double meaning, whether you intended it or not), starry, dawning, etc.

And you're right - our century is like the shrivelled corpses, despite the bellicose strutting and constant blares, just two of the currently popular mannerisms we admire.

In Portland here, we had an exhibition made of corpses that had been stripped of skin to various degrees, set in various poses of activities (like preparing to bat a ball), then encased in plastic. Supposedly educational, "Body Worlds 3" is macabre in every sense. When the exhibition was in Seattle, an organ was stolen from one of the figures, but was later recovered. Some consider it art. I consider it yechh.

I do disagreed with Leanne on one thing. The Ancient Egyptians had an obsession with death that exceeded ours. The only difference is that they did not pretend otherwise.

Alcuin