The Animal Kingdom

The Animal Kingdom occupies a most momentous place in Natural History. It is where beasts are born, into a hierarchy. It is where the mind sups, on the lower order of things.

The forest's leafy-green, as it always was, and the sky supercilious. To grow from one to the other takes time, it takes oblivion. The ones that are born can't do it. They are flesh, or they are leaves of grass. They tear. They wrestle. They sleep. Births. Subtractions... There is horror, there is blank comedy.

Is there order, rough quiet, in the Kingdom at night? Our souls are our homes, and thoughts are thieves; it is what it is; why animals have no souls