So blind! So blind!
We rush toward our own destruction
Laughing…
Underneath a waning Autumn moon I look up into the clear night sky,
Contemplating how the heavens never seem to change with the burning winds of history.
The howling gods of war may let a million pints of blood upon the ground
Bury a thousand hapless souls at sea, yet the stars still shine --
Warm, bright spots against the cold, enveloping darkness --
So impersonal, so eternal.
The pendulum of Fate swings in our world from triumph to tragedy.
This is our lot. We are born, we die; we laugh, we cry; we believe, we doubt...
We love, we hate; we fight, we surrender -- the tidal flow, never ceasing.
Like the moon, we are here in the fullness of mysterious beauty, then seen no more.
Another glimmering orb rises above the night horizon to take our place.
And how else should it be? We were never meant forever,
Yet life lives on like so many lights in the dark vault of heaven.
We have been given so little time.
Our life is like one lunar cycle,
The backdrop an infinite universe with no beginning, no end.
Yet for a space we cast a pale beam upon our world,
Quietly illumine what would otherwise be hidden beneath a cloak pitch black
Whisper secrets otherwise buried in graves of blindness.
For awhile we tell our story to other children of the night as we circle round the earth;
We will not always speak, just as the moon not always shines,
For our life is but thievery, just as the moon steals her light from the sun.
Like so many stars in the cold, night sky we await the day under a canopy of darkness.
In a world tossed about like chaff in the wind --
Always changing yet remaining so much the same --
We come, we go spend our moments in earnest for a never-dying fire,
An eternal dawning, a never-ending beginning.
But now it is night, and it is cold … and the Autumn moon is waning.
Originally written years ago and published in a small paper, this piece has gone through some minor revisions and re-publications, the above being my latest. On another note, this also happens to be one of my own personal favorites.