Who am I?
Or if life’s a matter of fact,
what?

I am vegetable
if I am what I eat,
and perhaps only animal
if that it were meat.

Which am I,
if ape is in image
and man is in action?
Is man not defined by his wit worn detraction
from that which makes apes
evolution’s contraption?

We hide in the city
perhaps to keep from admitting
that which does not really need a committee,
that which need not be ensconced in a rhyme,
that which is no more a riddle than a comfortable guilt,
laid on like hands in ceremony.
What are we
if ‘inhuman’ is too ugly a word
and twenty questions are too many?