Mankind An Autobiography Poem by Mary Champion

Which came first -
the Big Bang
or the egg?

In fact, it went like this:

Humpty Dumpty falls from the wall,
smashes into a billion pieces
and from each piece a life form arises-
Primeval Slime;
single celled organisms;
primitive plants;
multi-celled organisms;
more complex plants;
reptiles;
mammals-
more or less in that order.
Only man remains unborn*

At last, the naked ape evolves
and surveys the complex creation,
a creation that has taken billennia to emerge.
He examines it ever more closely
with an increasingly critical eye
and decides it is simply not good enough.

For millennia he works at it -
tweaking here,
twiddling there.
Then he becomes more ambitious,
decides on a complete rewrite,
installing more ill-considered upgrades,
divorces himself from his roots,
goes for broke
and heads for the stars,
but like Icarus, he flies too close.

Poor old Humpty Dumpty -
Man forgot about the final synthesis,
failed to realise,
he was supposed to put himself together again.

Long vanished from Reality -
only his epitaph remains -
'Computers evolved - and Man became extinct.'**

Obviously, they should have taken Humpty to the Repair Shop.