2065. ALL THESE REMARKABLE ALLOYS

ALL THESE

REMARKABLE ALLOYS

I am listening while I watch the Sun - hearing

its noise, a steady thermal hiss, a large cosmic

hum thrumming. It colors the spaceship I'm on;

stark blues ands raving mad reds. Elliptical shadows

thwarting each other, and the deep blackness of

Space as I see it. There is no end in this sight,

nor can this ending see. Ethereal as some leaden

mouse hiding frightened in a large room's corner,

I too hover and shake. I do not know where it is

I am, and my wandering eyes - to behold something

at all - look about and see only the ages before me,

and behind, stretched. Time in becoming, or matter in

decay. You know how it is said the 'past is proloque';

well it happens the other way too. 'Life', Samuel

Butler said, 'is like giving a violin concert while learning

to play the instrument.' I'd imagine he meant all at once,

at the very same time, learning and doing, in public.

Somehow I find a meaning there, and here - beneath an

obtrusive and settling Sun that wants to burn my face

but cannot. Instead, I swelter in the heat of thought,

realizing only faintly where I am, and where it is I

am perhaps going, and, alas, where it is - all - that

I have already been. I am listening while I stare at the

Sun; hearing its noise, all its steady thermal hiss.