Educating Ego

By what labyrinthine repetitions,
by what agile, precise divisions,
by what accretions, do we compile
a life's arcane hieroglyphs,
its subtle, unmathematic mysteries?
What cold calculus shall we yet invent
to construct the introspective model?
What distribution curve, what standard deviation,
shall predict the time remaining on atomic clocks
'tll we exist entirely in a universe of our own creation?
Shall we make of stars mere red-shifted,
spectral lines on photographic plates?
Will heartache be reduced to sine waves,
mapped by styli on graduated rolls
revolving in precise concurrence
with computed average biologic rates?
Shall we expunge the record from the file,
shall we precipitate a system crash?
What key shall be called escape and which restore?
What impulse shall span the neural gap,
what synapsis presage what deity?
And will there be a world left to explore?
Will we stop to soliloquize?
What obeisance shall we require?
Piety is no mark of barren earth and rocks,
nor of sterile wind and raging fire.