Punchlines of a cosmic joke

Creating a world in which no one believes,

rational lunatics' febrile fervors, zeals

in proving, demonstrating, and suggesting

that sciences procure our self-transcendence,

technologies secure our vast cosmic claims,

mathematics corresponds to all that is real,

engineering solves all problems it creates—

equipped our poor humanity with the tools

and talents needed to dig a cosmic grave:

“we understand now all there's to know, except—”

—killing a world in which no one could believe.

 

What lived once in caves we did not excavate:

we want to know their words and thoughts, not their laughs,

their levities could undermine our prowess

for conquest, dominance, making our own rules—

the rowdiness and ribaldries the ancients

echoed loud somehow offend us as adults—

our pretence of maturity and wisdom

would buckle could we hear the ancients' laughter,

not that we could rebuke their laughing at or

with comic or ludic matters of their days—

no, we would have to think them laughing at us.