When all that we've ever been, and are,
Returns to our originating star--what then?
Surely the forms remain,
Whether or not there subsists a comprehending brain.
It's true, there seems no voice that to us de profundis speaks:
Our view is from and to, and over, barren peaks;
Yet even in--if--a final existential race
To an infinitely minuscule embrace--
How could the forms disappear,
Being simply, not in that way, there?
* "I swear I think there is nothing but immortality" --Walt Whitman, "To Think of Time," Leaves of Grass, 1855, ed. J. Kaplan, 1982, p. 106.
Returns to our originating star--what then?
Surely the forms remain,
Whether or not there subsists a comprehending brain.
It's true, there seems no voice that to us de profundis speaks:
Our view is from and to, and over, barren peaks;
Yet even in--if--a final existential race
To an infinitely minuscule embrace--
How could the forms disappear,
Being simply, not in that way, there?
* "I swear I think there is nothing but immortality" --Walt Whitman, "To Think of Time," Leaves of Grass, 1855, ed. J. Kaplan, 1982, p. 106.