The man-brained and man-handed ground-ape, physically <br />The most repulsive of all hot-blooded animals <br />Up to that time of the world: they had dug a pitfall <br />And caught a mammoth, but how could their sticks and stones <br />Reach the life in that hide? They danced around the pit, shrieking <br />With ape excitement, flinging sharp flints in vain, and the stench of their bodies <br />Stained the white air of dawn; but presently one of them <br />Remembered the yellow dancer, wood-eating fire <br />That guards the cave-mouth: he ran and fetched him, and others <br />Gathered sticks at the wood’s edge; they made a blaze <br />And pushed it into the pit, and they fed it high, around the mired sides <br />Of their huge prey. They watched the long hairy trunk <br />Waver over the stifle trumpeting pain, <br />And they were happy. <br /> <br />Meanwhile the intense color and nobility of sunrise, <br />Rose and gold and amber, flowed up the sky. Wet rocks were shining, a little wind <br />Stirred the leaves of the forest and the marsh flag-flowers; the soft valley between the low hills <br />Became as beautiful as the sky; while in its midst, hour after hour, the happy hunters <br />Roasted their living meat slowly to death. <br /> <br />These are the people. <br />This is the human dawn. As for me, I would rather <br /> <br />Be a worm in a wild apple than a son of man. <br />But we are what we are, and we might remember <br />Not to hate any person, for all are vicious; <br />And not be astonished at any evil, all are deserved; <br />And not fear death; it is the only way to be cleansed.<br /><br />Robinson Jeffers<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/original-sin/
