Our search for meaning bears no fruit;
Our barren fields are the burial ground
Of soldiers martyred in their march
Seeking reason, who was not found
Though we scoured the plains of Logic,
And emptied our culture bare:
All our greatness was at fault:
We looked for ourselves - we were not there,
And, tumbling further, we tumbled on:
Our edifices and monuments, defaced and gone;
We tore them down with our own hands,
Ripped their roots before they longed
To take seed and flower, blossom and bloom.
So we bled our meaning where we sought it,
Strangled it even as we struggled to see it;
It was not our fault - we did not mean to do it,
Only our clocks have stopped: ergo, time is lost,
And our rulers are bent; therefore so too is space;
We measure meaning by our yardsticks -
And can the mind exist without its face?
We did not know it, we were ignorant -
Though some would say they heard our Reason
Shriek her animal, bestial cry, parsed with insight,
Most profound, into the chamber of her prison,
We must dismiss them - they were fools
Who looked for gold in all our lead,
And oil in deserts, stars in dust;
The road that others fear to tread
Was pockmarked with their travails -
We wrote, instead, in ink our Reason's will,
And placed it, tender, in her grave; all we seek
Is now her corpse; we are looking for it still.