SocraticGadfly: How fragile is man ...

April 18, 2013

How fragile is man ...

I had started this poem about two weeks ago, when Shekespeare's one Hamlet soliloquy had a mash-up in my mind with Psalm 8. I finished it up today, motivated by some existential philosophy and comparative religions reading.

HOW FRAGILE IS MAN



How fragile is man in constitution
Like a creature without divine design
Evolved through naturalistic process
Without omnipotentcy’s strictures.

Noble in reason in his own mind’s eye
As maker of gods in his own image
In action how like them, and they like him.
Petty, petulant and vindictive.

Made but little higher than chimpanzees
Crowned not at all by divine glory
Not shaped from clay, but proteins and sugars
A product of eons of slow shaping.

Glory enough is this, if one allows
Taking awe at rude shaping by nature.
Even if a Humean abortion
This life, nonetheless, is still a wonder

Cosmic quantum nothingness, after all
While it might guarantee something starting
Gave continuation no surety
The abortion, if you will, could have died.

Marvel existentially, then, will you
At this Daoist moment in time, so brief;
It, you, and I, may not have more breath.s

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