Messages from My Soul

What Man Is Not

WHAT MAN IS NOT

Maybe 'tis time that all you wot

All the things that man is not;

For with him the things that you compare

Can hardly tell what's him in there.

"Man is Hell and Heaven," all you say,

"Where both angel and the devil lay,"

But, with the firmest nay, I can return,

"how come you wise can't this discern?

Man is man and never lessened,

So little of God and far less of legend.

Much more than merely a bodied claim

Of heirship to God, far more than a name

Engraved in death on a piteous stone,

More than a doll of flesh and bone.

More than a shell caught up by the tide

And tossed sans mercy to the other side,

Less than a structured tale of tragedy,

Of hamartia and failure, of faults and irony--

After all, man is only made indeed

Of what for which he'd stand to bleed;

He's not of things he's taught to be,

No, none of these, I'd mostly ween;

Man is not but god's decree 

For he is made, much possibly,

Of something better in between.