The Dust Did Roar

Who will sing her to sleep,
when all the candles are burned,
when all the winds have died?

Eons after the choir is silent,
does not their chorus echo,
in the dark and in the deep?

Through crumbled halls,
and broken rings,
the sound still stalks.

From one tiny corner,
long past its end,
the song still calls.

A billion souls and a billion more,
did labour and bare,
not knowing their part.

The fullness of Creation,
the greatest play of all,
to show at last,
the dust did roar.

Being proud of my work is not something that comes easy to me. But when I completed the above poem, I confess that I did manage to feel a sense of creative joy, particularly spurred by the last line. I remember googling the words convinced that I had read it somewhere before and was merely regurgitating it unconsciously. When I couldn’t find anything remotely similar, I had to come to terms with the fact that I had created something original and that I liked it.

The poem ponders whether there will be any sign that of humanity ever existed when the universe reaches its inevitable heat death and if there is even meaning to the various works of humans when a cold and silent universe is all we can ever expect to survive. I was inspired the famous painting of Alan Lee that depicts the fellowship of the ring passing through the long abandoned great halls of the dwarf kingdom Moria. I tried to imagine travellers in the far future walking through the ruins of humanity and what they would think of the results of all our toils.