World Without End

They wink at us, beckoning
Celestial fireflies
Like so many twinkles of mirth
In the sky’s ten billion eyes…
Winking at us, laughing at us
Who would seek to know
Just how far the galaxies
And universes go…

In the great flood of eternity
We are a single drop of rain
Upon the beach of existence
We are a single grain.
What untellable mysteries
Abide among the stars?
They beam at us, bid us adieu
As they careen away from us…

How did all existence come to be? -
We try to ask the stars -
Is there, out there, a consciousness
Apart from this of ours?
Our questions were futility
For little did we know
We were staring at light that died
Billions of years ago…

There are yet billions more
Which we will never set our eyes on
The Universe stretches forth
With no borders, no horizon…
Larger than imagination,
Than the most fertile mind could reckon -
Unimaginably deep, mind-bogglingly huge;
And larger every second…

One day, they say,
The lights shall go out in the sky
And darkness shall be absolute
When the last star bids us goodbye.
The sky will close her eyes
And make as if to sleep
A slumber filled with restless dreams
Of the mysterious deep…

The Universe has chasms nothing can penetrate
Nor even light transcend…
It stretches on, and on, and on, and on…
World Without End.