Ed Wright #2 Hungry Suns in response to Peter Boyle's Afterlife of a Genius

HUNGRY SUNS

Sentiment is wasted on those

paralysed by completed destinies.

There is no further justice for the dead,
history is just a place to store your outrage.

The afterlife is living memory –
all else is bunk; poets plan
their words for centuries hence –

posterity’s a lottery picked from the ruins,

a sonnet, a chip wrapper, the bills.
Whose words are they anyway?
New Shakespeare’s are concocted every year
to pump up the Professors’ staid careers.
The dead no longer read.

Does it matter how we die?

Only while we do it.

Our stains survive in heirs,

then they too are gone
to where white is black
and black all the colours in between.

Billions have gone before us,

billions more will follow –
wonder and meaninglessness –
what to do when gods have gone
to the long view’s hungry sun?
Stay close!

Be brave! Be insignificant!
Make funny!