"The Age"
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For what seemed an infinite time there were nights some cosmology. We'd heard of dark matter, we'd been assured into our planet, it somehow obeys a gentler law of gravity, it shouldn't frighten us that we were the universe's debris, It was hard to like what we knew. We wanted to live was one of our consolations. The universe was expanding that it had no center. And how look forward with hope, history again, history teaches us more than erasures, I also dared to say we could begin to work at things again, that nature still works that way. We would have a future. of mistakes and catastrophes, the darkness seemed to if anyone listened to me, it doesn't matter. Gradually, could walk home from school in the freshening light, so marvelous catbirds wanted to mimic them. Why say anything, the name of a new leader they trust on their lips, O O O they chant, .
that were too long. We knew a little science, not enough,
although it's everywhere, it doesn't collide, it will never slam
its particles move through each other. We'd begun to understand
or that when we look up at the stars, we're really looking back.
in the present, but it was dark. Ignorance
at an accelerating rate, we'd been told we were not at its center,
if not by looking up? I told the others we ought to study
more than diminutions, there'd be something for us there.
to make things, that I thought the hours of light would lengthen,
Up to then we'd been observing anniversaries only
blanket, to contain our terrible shame. I don't know
afternoons began seeping back. As I'd promised, the children
they seemed more playful, singing nonsensical songs
why tell them the endless nights would return? Listen to them,
and I hear like one struggling to wake from a mournful dream.