{
  "author": "<NAME>",
  "classification": "",
  "keywords": [],
  "period": "",
  "reference": "http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/171997",
  "region": "",
  "text": [
    "Although most are totally naked",
    "and too scant for even the slightest",
    "color and although they have no voice",
    "that I\u2019ve ever heard for cry or song, they are,",
    "nevertheless, more than mirage, more",
    "than hallucination, more than falsehood.",
    "They have confronted sulfuric",
    "boiling black sea bottoms and stayed,",
    "held on under ten tons of polar ice,",
    "established themselves in dense salts",
    "and acids, survived eating metal ions.",
    "They are more committed than oblivion,",
    "more prolific than stars.",
    "Far too ancient for scripture, each",
    "one bears in its one cell one text\u2014",
    "the first whit of alpha, the first",
    "jot of bearing, beneath the riling",
    "sun the first nourishing of self.",
    "Too lavish for saints, too trifling",
    "for baptism, they have existed",
    "throughout never gaining girth enough",
    "to hold a firm hope of salvation.",
    "Too meager in heart for compassion,",
    "too lean for tears, less in substance",
    "than sacrifice, not one has ever",
    "carried a cross anywhere.",
    "And not one of their trillions",
    "has ever been given a tombstone.",
    "I\u2019ve never noticed a lessening",
    "of light in the ceasing of any one",
    "of them. They are more mutable",
    "than mere breathing and vanishing,",
    "more mysterious than resurrection,",
    "too minimal for death."
  ],
  "title": "Address: the Archaeans, One Cell Creatures",
  "year": ""
}