The kettle doesn’t know it needs a cup
To hold the water it was plugged to boil:
Where was the I when nature thought me up?
When air entered my lungs, made me uncoil?
Now that the body starts to flinch and falter,
There’s no way that the I is getting out.
Nature persists as circumstances alter.
The cup’s the part that’s broken, not the spout.
Again, what of the primal soup so-called?
What consciousness was lurking in that gloop
To meet the grateful bowl that holds our brains?
Brimful, our life, and what it all contains
Is nothing but the sight of death, forestalled
By stubborn hope of something more than soup.
