A Space Of Time Poem by Peter Black

Outside my house is a space of land;
There no one knows whether I am alive:
A living garden kept from human hands
Where the moon and sun alone, set and rise;
Never there have I a living thing seen:
Animals that crawl or through the air fly,
Or bugs that for one day flash, live and die:
Nothing but vegetation ever grows,
There where the earth forbids all spirits and souls.
Yet by chance, one day, this place discovered,
And for many more frequented its grass;
Took of the wild berries and hanging fruits;
Ate of the herbs and bulbs beneath dirt.
For many days I lied in fields of wheat,
That swayed in the winds giving up their seeds
And began to see life: a precious thing;
Feared if I slept, I would not awake.
But then one day in the fields while I slept,
I came upon a vision: a deep dream,
That spread throughout time and infinity.
How; why I saw these things I do not know,
Nor can I guess if it was a true thought,
From being's realm or the throne of high god.
I can speak, only what I think I saw.
In my dream, I saw the emptiness black,
Not one spot, or dot to say things exist,
And for an eternity the blackness watched,
Fearing I was dead and in nothing, lost.
My heart's beat sounded and I recalled life;
From out space erupted an array of light:
Particles smashed and collided apart.
The emptiness was replaced: things became
And forever did existence remain
A thin ball of swirling gas and future days
That raced to an end, end that never came.
And that swirling matter remained the same
Until at spots where things began spin,
I watched there, as if tied upon a string,
Around one point the gasses began bond,
Twisting until, by an explosion brought,
Heat and light kept in a tremendous shock.
Light! Hope! And so I saw first existence;
But still I watched the universe expand.
Stars of such size and force, that my own self,
Was tossed, pulled, spun; wildly shot,
From sphere to sphere and distance to its end,
Saw space growing outward through nothingness.
Yet all things are proven to meet an end.
I saw the first stars collapse, exploding.
Forever, I watched stars inside graves form,
And matter building planetary orbs;
Each one I saw; wished, "Could there be life? "
Watched them burn, over time being destroyed.
Stars were born and stars were taken away;
Gone, rubble was left to show unknown remains;
Yet always, new lights in the darkness shown.
I smiled then for a new truth was known,
"As sure as there is death, there must be life
We die, but a new race will begin."
Forever, I watched, listened and waited
Moving like a ghost through singular space.
And it could be true: I saw planets,
With algae and heat that nourished life
And on others full fledged existence shown:
Trees, growth and walking things amongst the stone.
With each sight, I shouted out, "Hope and life! "
Spending as much time as I could watching,
I saw creatures of different shape and line,
Trees, flowers, fruits, food and forever so one;
But there was one constant in my survey:
Life is life and when simplest it is great.
But in time, those creatures upon the worlds,
Grew in mind and fears like me and our race,
And I know the worlds would be turned to waste.
I remembered how sweet innocence looked
Upon those creatures and their distant worlds:
The quest for food and the pleasure of birth;
To live on: three purposes pure and true.
Remembering them, even death was soft
For it held a purpose: nothing was lost.
Then when those blessed races with consciousness
Rose, I saw reason was hidden from them.
Ignorance, Envy became those worlds' high kinds,
Giving forth to wrath, pride, sloth and hungry greed.
Though mixed in, like us was art and kind love,
Compared to the dark, that glimmer: unseen.
And I saw which I wished I had not seen,
For I know the evil in us complete.
What is science when it works foul ends!
What is poetry when it lies to men!
Those races flourished and in a short time
Destroyed their worlds and not long after died.
How they looked, moved, spoke, smelled, it matters not.
Trillions lived and died with a minor thought.
War, hate, and destruction born from envy;
That ignorance had destroyed most I saw;
But some their own world's revenge covered flaw
They being stricken away by weather;
Famine wasting away like dried grass;
Some were crashed by meteors into ash
Or distant rays that flared burning their flesh.
But one thing I saw and always held true,
Was that life died, but in time it was renewed..
So shortly did they exist looking from space,
Before in an instant they were erased.
Most planets I saw were rocks of nothing;
Cities emptied and ruins that displayed,
Markings of races from a destroyed age.
I did not know if it was worth living
When in time all things must perish and die;
Breathe and live, so that nothing knows they were.
Inside my weakest moment, I saw Earth.
The blue ball displayed with clouded whites and greens
From outside looked so peaceful and serene;
Yet as I gazed upon our human works
And saw the people moving in massed bands;
The monstrous cities choking the land;
As I prepared myself to look and hope
A dark cloud: a wave spread across the globe.
Later, when it cleared all of us were gone;
Soon, not long after our truth degraded.
All that was left were those ancient temples.
Earth was reclaimed by plants and animals.
Where was I then in the limits of space,
The last person, with no home or kept place.
The stars exploded and the worlds drew back
Matter collected, spread; nothing was left;
There, I heard in the darkness shout a voice
And all existence inside space was snapped,
Recoiled hard and froze at one small point.
Nothing, nowhere, no one; how did I feel;
I choked, drew in a breath, opened my eyes,
Among the grain stalks and ground where I lied.