Did a cognitive revolution take place
Some tens of thousands of years ago
Or was the fat jelly of the cortex
Mostly unchanged for ten times as long

Can we even contemplate the cogito
Without resort to the Cartesian ghost
Or for that matter without resort
To culture’s innumerable compulsions

What do people care about
And do they care about the right things
Do they care that a person not oneself
Should experience unnecessary pain

A woman enters a vast stadium
On the last leg of a 26-mile run
But she doesn’t run
She staggers

All the other competitors
Have entered long before her
The many cameras transmit these images
To a billion viewers worldwide

With each stride she leans shockingly to one side
She drags one side of her body as if stricken
The commentators praise this triumph
Of the human spirit

She completes the final circuit
She is allowed the agonizing completion
She has done credit to herself her nation her species
In the conquest of the body