The Wait of the World: Act Three

The Wait of the World, a poem in three acts 

by Helen Harrop

June 2012

Act Three:
The universe waits,
The universe watches
Its juvenile galaxies
Of birth stars and death stars
Leaving their light legacies.
Destruction and destiny
Played out through
An infinite sky ballet.
 

All stagnant satellites,
All ghostly globes,
All spinning baubles
And enslaved pebbles.
Numerous as grains of sand,
Smooth and bright
As playground marbles.
All fire and brimstone,
All hell and highwater,
All gas and vapour,
All clumsy collisions
All futile and futureless.
An orbiting ossuary.

The universe waits,
The universe watches
For the final falling star
For the celestial light to fade
For the future to fold in on itself.
One dark night of the soul
And then ...
Nothing.
All blank horizons
And inert energy laid bare
Across the wide waiting sky.

The nothingness waits,
The nothingness watches.
And there is no end
To the endless beginning.