Brains Keep Changing

Narrative is a mnemonic device
Co-evolved by genes and languages,
Useful for compacting abstracted
Information coded in sentences

So that it can be remembered
For multiple human generations
With minimal corrosion. Writing
Was not invented for narrative,

But as a supplemental function,
Keeping track of things important
To the cultures first using writing—
Seasons, eclipses, floods, transactions,

Ritual prognostications, exactly
The things narrative has a hard time
Handling—writing is neither for story
Nor needs any narrative in it,

But the coevolved brain lags mind,
Lags what it calls its civilizations,
And the human social organism
Is still most exquisitely tuned

To stories, not to record-keeping.
And why should it be otherwise?
Notches on bones and paintings
In caves have a time depth

Of a few tens of thousands
Of years at the outside, while
What’s accepted as writing
Is even shallower, five thousand,

Maybe. Storytelling and language—
We can’t even sound how deep
Those two go—down to the base
Of our species per se, at least.

It’s gonna take awhile before
You get humans who can live
Without hungering for tales
Instead of crunched explanations,

But the explanations already
Have begun a loosening—lyrical,
Mathematical, dull and dry, droll.
Don’t look now. Brains keep changing.