I suppose Mankind per se is that unruly rabelaisan Infant, loving & devouring, with joyful greedy gusto, the world designed for such, making him/herself the measure of all things... endowed with such freedom & power by the Maker's own express & gracious will... & that such futuristic freedom & power might be difficult for popes & philosophers & kings & generals to grasp... so that the Parable of the Prodigal Son is the greatest parable, and Jesus perhaps took the stage name "Son of Man" in a somewhat literal (futuristic) sense...

- & the same prodigality of freedom & power leading miserable Mankind into all the terrible hellholes of both "progress" & the lack thereof... requiring the difficult climbing ascesis of saints, who love the Source and the Whole - the whole Truth - the suffering Shepherd - more than they love any particular thing (including themselves)... [& then, following along, they go on the difficult downward ascesis, loving each most abject suffering unimportant thing as a portion of the Whole...]

- & speaking of Infants, I was reminded of a particular thread on the Poetry site (a posting by A.E. Stallings), about "poetry & prophecy", where I commented that I sometimes felt my poems had prophesied some of my own later poems... & was reminded of this very early poem, & how it seemed to foreshadow the whole Forth of July adventure...