Time’s arrow deathward delves,
None are left behind on shelves,
Beetles, curlew, bare-faced man,
Cannot stop what birth began –
Pairing, getting, toil at nest,
Shrugging spawn to east and west,
Loss of poise, then dulling eyes:
Something strikes and snaps your cries.
First, though, man with “ought” and “is”
Limps the world whose faults are his,
Beauty goads him, stings the good,
Raged, he slaughters for his food.
But at last the cosmos ends,
Black holes leach and nothing mends,
Heat death starves in deepest dark,
Silence touch-walks through the ark.
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© March 2017
