So do we have a future, you and I,
Our cuckoo past lives nesting in our present?
And all those others, past and future, that
We’ve never met, and never shall: will they
Survive? Our memories, those vain attempts
To carve our names on the Alzheimic tree
Of history? And do the longed-for patter
Of tiny feet, or the approaching rustle
Of cockroach wings much matter,
In the end?
A thousand questions still unanswered;
And yet the answer is both obvious
And baffling, and the redundant questions
Recur in puzzlement ad nauseam,
While homo credulus fiddles the ancient books,
Peers at outdated scripts in childish hope
Of easy answers,
And arm-wrestles with bombs for cheap thrills
Which cost us the earth. Can we never learn?
We know so much; why do we understand
Nothing about the things we think we know?
This little world shrinks faster every day,
Ruled and misruled by fools and rascals;
And we are prisoners of our giddy past.