When the time comes,
That the light seeks a better audience,
(Of virtue and number),
Our story will be whispered,
Echoing through the empty halls of our descendants,
Yet unbuilt,
“We have lived and laughed,
Loved;
Now there’s nothing left.”
That delicate voice will be drowned out,
By the yawp of fearful children,
Born of our strife,
Raised by our villages,
Inheritors of our blind sin;
But only for /a/ time.
The cacophony will bounce off the walls of foreign neighbors,
Tuned in only to their ‘the’ language of existence,
Ricocheting like an unintended consequence,
Until that purely human noise,
Subsides;
A victim of itself.
And when tomorrow breaks,
The voice of a stranger will ring through the cosmos,
In a still, small voice:
“Goodbye, Mother.”
Then we will know the future,
Hold it in our hands,
Like a fistful of dirt.