Life and Time

Composed on 4 July 1988

Time when measured by the eternity’s scale

Shows the transience of the Universe without fail

A million years of earth-time do sail

Faster than a violent tropical gale.

The ruins of Babylon and the pyramids of old avail

No sense of vastness of eternity’s vale.

Countless millennia of life on earth leave a dot-like detail

That quickly vanishes without even a trail.

Universes like ours run through life cycles on a grand scale

Like tulips that bloom, for which a billion light-years in time may entail.

Between creations lie aeons of stillness without seasons that bring rain or hail

Nothing remaining save the power that created the sunshine, the sky and the nightingale.