O Terra, Addio

[tomsdisch]

If all life is wiped off the map
in times to come, if mankind
follows the poor old polar bears
and the penguins and orchids of the Amazon
down the path to extinction,
if all the complex proteins break apart
and fail to retrace their steps up the hill
of entropy, we need not unduly mourn,
for truly the sun will rise upon the vistas
of that lifeless world with the same
wonder and glory, and the moon create
its splendid special effects as usual
on the dunes and sterile beaches
of an earth that will have been reduced
to plain geometry. Those Platonic beauties
will be undiminished. Ice will have the same
crackle, clouds the same imponderable
gravity. Winds will still ruffle
the face of the waters. It will all be
just as we are imagining it now,
supernally calm, a kind of allegory
for which no explanation is required.

--Tom Disch