When nothing else is left. When the transformers have blown out, the subways flooded over, the blinking towers gone dark and the far satellites wander cold and silent. When the fragile gloss of pseudo-civilization cracks, and then shatters, and then becomes nothing but myth and hazy memory. Alongside the pain and blood and rewakened night terrors, there will be—poetry.
***
I wandered through the halls of Christendom, blown aimlessly like the dandelion wisp. In glowing dust of sunlit corridors, I shone. In the musty dark of the catacombs, I passed as a cold shadow. And after the long hours of silence, many centuries, finding myself again outside among the throng, I walked on. At times I spoke, much to my regret. I will walk softly among beloved friends and enemies, to the end of the Earth.
***
For certain moments—impossible to know when they will happen, or why—it is enough that some things have taken place, just once. One moment of a hand on your chest, one awestruck gaze up into the overpowering arm of a turquoise wave, one brief flash of the Mystery beyond reckoning in the phrase of a song—these are enough. This world was enough. Memory sates, then, instead of harrowing. You feel, in these moments, that they are your inheritance forever, and are well-pleased and content.