[00:03.29]Existence is a stage on which we pass,
[00:10.29]A sleepwalk trick for mind and heart:
[00:15.46]It's hopeless, I know,
[00:17.99]But onward I must go
[00:20.54]And try to make a start
[00:26.89]At seeing something more than day-to-day
[00:32.80]Survival chased by final death.
[00:37.77]If I believed this the sum
[00:40.11]Of the life to which we've come
[00:42.35]I wouldn't waste my breath.
[00:48.16]Somehow, there must be more.
[01:05.86]There was a time when more was felt than known,
[01:11.20]But now, entrenched inside my sett,
[01:16.12]In light more mundane,
[01:18.72]Thought rattles round my brain:
[01:20.99]We live, we die... And yet?
[01:26.76]In the beginning there was order and destiny
[01:34.30]But now that path has reached the border, and
[01:39.66]On our knees
[01:42.61]Is no way to face the future, whatever it be.
[01:49.49]Though the forces which hold us in place
[01:54.20]Last through eons in unruffled grace
[01:58.24]We, too, wear the face of creation.
[02:16.78]As anti-matter sucks and pulses periodically
[02:23.51]The bud unfolds, the bloom is dead, all space
[02:28.16]Is living history.
[02:29.95]It seems as though time must betray us, yet
[02:34.13]We're alive
[02:36.22]And though I see no God to save us still we survive
[02:42.35]Through the centuries of progress
[02:45.31]Which don't get us very far.
[02:49.90]All illusion! All is bogus
[02:52.63]We don't yet know what we are...
[03:03.49]Laughing, hoping, praying, joking, Son of Man!
[03:09.75]With lowered eyes but lifting hearts, we're
[03:13.28]Grains of sand
[03:15.70]And though, in time, the sea may claim us for
[03:19.76]Its own
[03:22.09]We are the rocks which root the future
[03:25.68]On us it grows!
[03:27.98]We might not be there to share it
[03:31.01]If eternity's a jest
[03:35.34]But I think that I can bear it
[03:38.58]If the next life is the best.
[04:34.71]Even if there is a heaven when we die
[04:39.46]Endless bliss would be as meaningless as the lie
[04:43.81]That always comes as answer to the question
[04:47.08]"Why do we see through the eyes of creation?"
[05:11.09]Adrift without a course, it's very lonely here,
[05:25.72]Our only conjecture what lies behind the dark.
[05:40.93]Still, I find I can cling to a lifeline,
[05:47.17]Think of a lifetime which means more
[05:53.96]Than my own one
[05:56.80]Dreams of a grander thing than we are.
[06:05.29]Time and Space hang heavy on my shoulders:
[06:16.33]When all life is over who can say
[06:23.17]No mutated force shall remain?
[06:40.55]Though the towers of the city are denied to we
[06:46.83]Men of clay
[06:49.61]Still we know we shall scale the heights some day.
[06:56.89]Frightened in the silence
[07:01.39]Frightened, but thinking very hard,
[07:12.57]Let us make computations of the stars.
[08:54.32]Older, wiser, sadder, blinder, watch us run;
[09:01.10]Faster, longer, harder, stronger, now it comes:
[09:07.30]Colour blisters, image splinters gravitate
[09:13.46]Towards the centre, in final splendour
[09:17.20]Disintegrate.
[09:19.78]The universe now beckons
[09:22.67]And Man, too, must take His place...
[09:26.95]Just a few last fleeting seconds
[09:30.35]To wander in the waste
[09:40.51]And the children who were ourselves move on
[09:46.04]Reincarnation stills it's now perfected song
[09:52.36]And at last we are free of the bonds of creation.
[10:05.29]All the jokers and gaolers,
[10:10.04]All the junkies and slavers too,
[10:14.49]All the throng who have danced a merry tune
[10:21.42]Human we can all be,
[10:25.21]But Humanity we must rise above,
[10:36.05]In the name of all faith and hope and love.
[10:45.15]There's a time for all pilgrims,
[10:49.54]And a time for the fakers too,
[10:53.96]There's a time when we all will stand alone and nude;
[11:01.31]Naked to the galaxies
[11:05.61]Naked, but clothed in the overview...
[11:16.05]As we reach Childhood's End we must start anew.
[11:35.22]And though dark is the highway
[11:41.11]And the peak's distance breaks my heart,
[11:46.73]For I never shall see it, still I play my part,
[11:55.90]Believing that what waits for us
[12:00.21]Is the cosmos compared to the dust of the past...
[12:12.11]In the death of mere humans life shall start!