Archaean horizon
The first sunrise
On a pristine gaea
Opus perfectum
Somewhere there
us sleeping
After sleeping
through a hundred million centuries
we have finally opened our eyes
on a sumptuous planet
sparkling with color
bountiful with life
Within decades
we must close our eyes again
Isn't it a noble
and enlightened way of
spending our brief time
in the sun
To work at understanding
the universe
and how we have come
to wake up in it
The cosmic law
of gravity
pulled the newborns
around a fire
A careless cold infinity
in every vast direction
Lonely farer
in the Goldilocks zone
she has a tale to tell
From the stellar nursery
into a carbon feast
enter LUCA
The tapestry
of chemistry
There is a writing
in the garden
leading us to
the mother of all
We are one
We are a universe
Forebears of what will be
scions of the Devonian sea
Aeons pass
writing the tale of us all
A day-to-day new opening
for the greatest show on Earth
Ion channels welcoming
the outside world
to the stuff of stars
Bedding the tree
of a biological holy
enter
life
The tapestry
of chemistry
There is a writing
in the garden
leading us to
the mother of all
We are one
We are a universe
Forebears of what will be
scions of the Devonian sea
Aeons pass
writing the tale of us all
A day-to-day new opening
for the greatest show on Earth
We are here
to care for the garden
The wonder of birth
of every form most beautiful
Every form most beautiful
We are one
We are a universe
Forebears of what will be
scions of the Devonian sea
Aeons pass
writing the tale of us all
A day-to-day new opening
for the greatest show on Earth
After a billion years
the show is still here
Not a single one of your
fathers died young
The handy travelers
out of Africa
Little Lucy of the Afar
Gave birth to fantasy
to idolatry
to self-destructive
weaponry
Enter the God of gaps
deep within the past
Atavistic dread of the hunted
Enter Ionia
the cradle of thought
The architecture of understanding
The human lust to feel
so exceptional
to rule the Earth
Hunger for shiny rocks
for giant mushroom clouds
The will to do as
you'd be done by
Enter history
the grand finale
Enter ratkind
Man
he took his time in the sun
Had a dream to understand
a single grain of sand
He
gave birth to poetry
but one day'll cease to be
Greet the last light
of the library
Man
he took his time in the sun
Had a dream to understand
a single grain of sand
He
gave birth to poetry
but one day'll cease to be
Greet the last light
of the library
Man
he took his time in the sun
Had a dream to understand
a single grain of sand
He
gave birth to poetry
but one day'll cease to be
Greet the last light
of the library
We were here
We were here
We were here
We were here
We are going to die
and that makes us
the lucky ones
Most people
are never going to die
because they are never
going to be born
The potential people
who could have been
here in my place
but who will in fact
never see the light of day
outnumber the sand grains
of Sahara
Certainly those unborn ghosts
include greater poets than Keats
scientists greater than Newton
We know this
because the set of possible people
allowed by our DNA
so massively exceeds
the set of actual people
In the teeth of these
stupefying odds
it is you and I
in our ordinariness
that are here
We privileged few
who won the lottery of birth
against all odds
How dare we whine
at our inevitable return
to that prior state
From which the vast majority
have never stirred
There is grandeur
in this view of life
with its several powers
having been originally breathed
into a few forms
or into one
And that whilst this planet
has gone cycling on
according to the fixed law of gravity
From so simple a beginning
endless forms most beautiful
and most wonderful
have been
and are being
evolved