Girl meets boy, X meets Y
A panoply of not-so-hapless variables combined and reduced
A courtship and then, la petite mort
And her secret collection: a yoke, a mulberry, a sprout, a swelling
A year in the universe only nine months
Convolution — ontogeny recapitulating phylogeny
All the soft machinery building a utopia
For unrolling from stardust to Adam
A new assemblage of indivisible particles not created but born
And borne with the constant threat of growing out of place,
growing big, growing through
And the senseless randomness of error: You; not you.
Crowned by departure from the anti-Parthenon, perfected in tears
Or such is the hope, to be delivered through imperfect origins
Without intercession by chance or by hand or by word
To spend a lifetime avoiding une mort subite
And hope for a good death?
The task of the doctor, as required
To take in the sick
Or bring out the dead.