A Hill of Beans

All of Man's works—from the crudest trinket

to the greatest cathedral;
all the writhing and writing,
the bustle and turmoil,
the empires built and the cities destroyed,
the battles waged and the peaces pursued;
all the burnings and bombings,
the freak advances
and the slow motion stumbles—

Do not amount to a fractional fraction,

a filing, an infinitesimal fig

Compared to the sprawl of the omniverse
In time and space and epoptic truths
As seen through a lens

(inner worlds and outer)

As glimpsed through a theorem

(mathematical sooths)

As felt through an insight and scholarly discourse
Wherein empirical wisdom reigns;
And still nothing matters! For the engine of everything—
The stars and spirals and gravity wells—
Will erase our commissions to the leastest and lastest:
The death-rattle thoughts of the final survivor.

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A Hill of Beans