Evolution

Love, for a moment come with me
To the surface of this poison sea.

Our element stagnates; down here each breath
Hastens our own and the universal death.
Here, under the green scum and Flattening wave.
The lowest adaptations alone survive.

All change, all go
With the sucking undertow
And we who'd resist.
Change with the rest.

Lords of the other species, we now make war on our own—
Our element stagnates. The species is devouring its young.

The stasimorphy of stagnation takes
A thousand hideous shapes

Fed on the gangrene, breathing among slaughter
The blood of our brothers, which is thicker than water.
What shall rest, emerging, as the tides recede.
From the water grown too viscid to breathe?
I wonder, will the mind of man ever climb
Out of its own poisonous slime?

Love, for a moment come with me
To the surface of this poison sea

Where, among the millions, here and there
A negligible few rise for a gulp of air.
We shall die like the rest in the foul water
But we shall die knowing we have gone further.

H.W.G.