The Cave Dweller

I sit up in my cave and contemplate –
Why must the swallows dive down at my head? –
I search my soul and with it I debate
The meaning of my life, the place of man
Here in this world, and wonder at the plan –
The swallows in their nests are chirping now –
Or if there is a plan, or yet a goal
For all that fills the universe’s bowl,
The atoms without ends are given ends
By life, and human action, it now bends
Us back to systems without ends. I brave
The damp and cold, the almost-empty cave –
With night now near the bats blow by my ears –
To understand myself to understand
The whole – Ow! Mosquito! – to see the sand
That shifts softly underfoot. Where’s the rock
We’ve all been told exists, that stops the clock
And brings to man his goal, his promised bliss?
I’m going to crush that noisome cricket
So I can get back to my thoughts. A thicket
Is growing up around them – they’re impure
Because of all this crap I must endure.
A single cricket is annoying, why
When fields of them delight my hungry ears?
It’s like a single, hungry man – he’s so
Annoying – but my soul is stung by choirs
Who sing their hunger – then I want to crush
The ones who have until they hemorrhage green
To feed the mankind that I love up here
Inside my cave up on my hill where I
Am safe from watching real men slowly die.