Poems

endings

the universe is dying.

like a great eagle,

it folds its wings, and turns back

into itself.

and in that span of infinite

space, Giants breathe their last breath—

and collapse, folding into darkness.

the universe could be dead

and we would not know it,

not until our Sun (the last of long survivors)

turned its own face

to the dark of sleep.

we live in the past.

stars long dead continue to shine

down upon us,

unheeded companions

in the night sky.

and will our children notice?

as the night around them turns black?

we are alone in the universe,

simply alone—a tiny planet

circling a tiny star in the vastness.

perhaps our fathers, long ago,

saw a brighter sky.  and faces

not unlike their own

looked back at them

from the brightness.

it is no longer so.

a speck orbits a point of light.

alone.

1991

he asked me where i was when they rioted

a survivor of another war

seven years later and halfway around the world

i knew the answer in my head

but did not speak it

ashamed of my ignorance;

that year was a year of dying

some few hundred miles away

while shops were burned and people killed

i sat in a sterile room watching tubes and monitors

oblivious to the world outside

twelve years later i went in search of her past

and was confronted by my ignorance

as a man from another world

told me the story that should have been mine

in our world that year

some waged war

and some struggled for independence

and she wasn’t the only one who died

--Tara Dennehy, 2007