All comes from dust and all to dust returns,
As man from ape from fish, and fish from slime,
And while the Earth spins, while the Sun still burns,
’Twixt womb and tomb we have but precious time.
We tread where better men have trod before,
And stand on giants’ shoulders yet we see
No further than the next great slump or war,
And turn our backs on truth and liberty.
Life is lost in the blinking of an eye,
And precious time like grains of sand slips by.
Forget the past, doomed ever to repeat
The errors and the follies of our kind,
Our passion runs high as does our conceit,
To others’ suff’ring we are deaf and blind.
Wounded, we strike our brothers in due course,
And for our sins show no trace of remorse.
We labour for the sake of making work,
Manipulated by the hidden hand,
Important tasks we should attend, we shirk,
And fail to see our shirking them was planned,
And as our masters pull our strings, we dance,
While trampling over others to advance.
We seek a higher purpose of our own,
Or of some God we know can not exist,
Chase pie in sky into the great unknown,
And fashion shibboleths from morning mist,
Tread wearily! When castles in the air
Come crashing down, their ruin brings despair.
There is no higher purpose, any search
Is doomed to failure even ’fore it starts,
While prayers in temple, synagogue and church
Remain unanswered save to cheating hearts.
All is illusion, all is flawed perception,
Such are the vagaries of self-deception.
The only things of worth for any man
Are that he makes a good end of himself,
And that he helps design a better plan
For future generations free of pelf,
And spiritual malaise; the only crime
Is that we squander all this precious time.
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