I Sing To Eternity
To an unmet friend:
You see the mortal world
and for you man is machine,
little more than a device
for the vagaries of evolution.
Faith is illusion, hope lacks
weight-- and love? Can love
be other than mere sex,
nature's sole mandate?
And your science now tells
you: what can I ever know?
All is quantum topsy-turvy,
mother nature being part
whore, part illusionist....
Your thinking breaks all
down to little pieces,
and nothing matters
as matter is all while
science the only god
left for us to worship.
And we are nothing,
not even dreams
anymore, just bits
and pieces to be
examined, classified,
and then ignored--
for science is all,
and faith but a
refuge for fools.
You are honest,
I know-- you see
yourself as just
another machine,
destined for decay.
then destruction--
your sentience but
a cruel joke told
yet again-- and
no one laughs.
You and I,
we breathe,
we think,
we live, but
you would stop
at death while
I begin there....
I sing to the Eternal:
quell not my songs
as they rise above
the sad despair born
of your vacant world
and follow myriad stars
streaming their wondrous
light in the vast dead-cold
Universe....
I sing to Eternity,
I sing to my Soul.
[poet's note: Under my pen name, Nolo Segundo, I used this as both the title and the opening poem in my first book, 'The Enormity of Existence' because I think of this poem as coming out of something I experienced in 1971 as a 24 year old when I almost drowned in the Winooski River in Vermont. I was like that 'unmet friend' before I went into that river: certain of my nihilism, believing only matter was real--no God, no soul, no meaning to life. For 1/2 a century I've had more questions than answers, but I do know that what we perceive as 'reality'--with our limited senses and limited intellects-- is not 'Reality'....]
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