Not manifest or destined
A horse is a horse
the moment it’s born.
So are tulips, microbes, stones.
Only humans are not born
to what we may become;
we are not manifest or destined.
Each of us must run
a private, evolutionary course,
before we stop to be mere animated matter -
and some of us will never learn.
A horse is a horse
the moment it’s born;
its grace its destination,
while we must learn to play the part,
to navigate between the monstrous,
near neutrality of evil
and the total, shocked embrace
of empathy that tells us each
of all these teeming billions
is the centre of a universe.