HOMO SAPIENCE

                    What’s best of all we humans have achieved
                    In our long history and upward climb?
                    Of all the enterprises we’ve conceived,
                    What should be counted as the most sublime?
                    That we have conquered gravity and space
                     Speaks well for our evolved intelligence,
                     Yet for us to achieve a greater grace
                     Requires our cultivating sapience,
                     That quality for which we’re doubly named
                     Though fail to demonstrate as we well should,
                      A history for which we are self-blamed,
                      Our failure to pursue always the Good.
                           That happiness we lack we’ll only find
                            When we’ve become both sapient and kind.