Buying Time...'til the Fat Lady Sings

If, in the end, every pyramid and monument, would, like sand castles, melt back to the sands; and would time's dust to dust touch Homer, Plato, Shakespeare, Einstein...Beatles, et al., then to what final truth has our every aspiration, like coital thrusts, striven to attest... if Goethe, with homo sapiens, be silenced by extinction, one day to be long forgotten, whence all eyes and ears have been swallowed by dark oblivion? With none to recall the pageantry of history's parade of empires, nations, peoples-- their rise and fall, each with a moment of glory, and day in the sun-- their sum comprising a multi-hued quilt of emblems, banners, anthems-- then--THEN--to what purpose? Indeed, I wonder: must extinction, necessarily, of cultures, civilizations, species... extinguish absolutely ultimate enduring meaning(s)? Is there no final archive, no cosmic museum or Hall of Fame, independent of progeny's archeologies which may or may never be? Imagine all those vanished, with no hope of ever being unearthed? To what end, then? I can only reply as an oncologist might, after review of a patient's terminal report: "Though your odds of escape are virtually nil," he somberly says, "you're not dead yet. This game ain't over... 'til the Fat Lady sings. You, me--and the rest of us-- are just as well to die trying-- like miners trapped in a shaft-- trying, trying...to buy more time." --Uncle GregA poem about...inevitable mortality, and coping. Written January 13th, 2004 © on Nov 12 2001 03:31 PM PST    0 • 12