Life by Comparison

Is there another way to live
For a creature like a human?
How to glean sense and instruction

From a sentence such as this one—
“In a generally hushed world,
Thunder was the loudest noise most

People ever heard”—if there’s no
Comparison? Comparison’s
Our vital, predatory map,

Constantly forming new margins
And interiors we compare
To earlier comparisons,

And it has more scales than a fish,
Sizes from eels’ to pangolins,’
From how well did this morning go

To how intelligent are you,
How moral, how worthy of life,
And what is the greatest evil?

Our comparisons torment us
But how could we live without them?
Even Dante’s demons compared

Feebly to the woes visited
On sinners when comparing
Their lots, then, now, and forever.

So here we are, children. Who is
The strongest, smartest, funniest,
Richest, cutest, bravest in class?

Nights in the desert, I can see,
Among rotating planets, stars,
Smooth satellites and winking jets,

The occasional meteor,
And I think, If a big enough
Asteroid smacks this iron pea,

The cycle of rebirth would cease,
And the beauty and suffering
And all the comparisons, and

I am waiting to be startled
By a clap of thunder louder
Than anything I’ve ever heard.