OUT OF CONTROL

How much do we control the courses of our lives?

I’m persuaded not at all; we go where fortune drives.

We have no word to say about where we are born,

Whether rich or poor, loved, cared for or forlorn…

What talents we may have, if full of health and zest,

Or feeble and afflicted, no match for any test.

Every incident of the day affects us, good or ill.

We respond as we must, no real thought or will.

Our freedom’s an illusion. We are cogs in a machine

Spinning aimless in the void, a vast eternal scene.