The Riddle of Evolution

Poem

Painting by Priti Ghosh

Reason, a nautilus sharp, precise, shore-seeking,
Livid with purpose, impatience striving on difference;
Bright edifice of mind, agnostic-willed, though born of God’s inference,
This the overt guide of man, partly divine, aspiring.

Life, an epic adventure of Divine but subservient to Mind,
Pain-riddled, door to death, prone to darkness, dissipated;
Immortal by nature, mortality a passage, yet death disguised,
This the outward movement of man, a stream of nectar limited.

Mind, half-God, half-animal, stupor finite, illogical,
Dream of divinity, scattered division of consciousness, also indivisible
Yet divided; light of God lost in outwardness, impossible,
This the present nature of man, an ignorance remarkable.

Body, a last frontier of Matter, pain hiding bliss, death immortality,
Vestiture of God myriad, home to Soul supreme, immortal,
Yet dies; secret chamber of delight, so loyal, so loving, so beautiful,
This man’s last evolving term, his supreme universality.

Spirit, a guiding beacon of these sea-tossed, foundering vessels,
Soul its mighty companion, conduit intimate, child infinitely evolving,
Turning their dreams real, their deaths lives everlasting, their sufferings
ecstasies unimagined. This the destiny of man, his hour coming.