1
Here I set down the end of this romance;
The final chapter of this adventure
That the end is home is no coincidence.
I followed the garden path to the front door
My house was just as it had been long since,
As I had left it, as it was before
The world had ended. Unseen artifice
An inexplicable love had authored this.
2
Inside, I found them, looking back at me
With that heart-breaking lack of any point
To them being there, which made me want to cry.
Why were they there, waiting and expectant?
Such impossible meaningless beauty
Waiting for me? It could be different.
But my desire to find and live with them
Was the love, beyond desire, which led me home.
3
Reaching across the vast infinite distance
Between two souls, who have two perspectives,
Who are entirely separate in experience
Who certainly were born to separate lives
To die alone and flourish only once,
Love opens out a world in the one who loves
To someone else. But that is not its use;
It does not serve to arouse such happiness.
4
Rather, the happiness and the desire
Is what the soul was made for at the start
When God first brought the world out of the fire
Of his creative and destructive spirit.
Who were those people waiting for me there?
What claim had they on me and on my heart?
This world is mine alone, I’ve never known
Another soul, a truly living one.
5
I try to express the most perfect response
To my desire when I looked at my kin.
How love affects you and how softly it burns,
Without a meaning other than this one:
To be the reason of all existence.
A man’s alone. If all creation
Were put to death by him, he’d be forgiven
By God, he would be welcome still in heaven
6
If he repented and asked for mercy.
For no one matters more than him to God.
We know this. Therefore, why be with these three?
Such were the marvellous thoughts which filled my head
When I returned and found my family.
In my first life, before the end of the world,
Sometimes the child would spend time at my house.
I’d pick her up with spare clothes and nappies
7
I’d take her to the car and strap her in
Calm and indifferent to me she was
Her chubby legs, with miniature shoes on
Her hair clipped back. She wore a frilly dress
We’d eat and she would sleep soundly alone
So I would work into the early hours
At electronic circuits I had made
Before I tired and took myself to bed.
8
The next day we would go to Nain’s, then town
There we would eat, and I would feed her bread.
I’d hold her close, as if she were my own,
She sat upon my arm, close to her dad.
Now there were really two people in one
Alone entirely, but the world was shared.
Yet from the metaphysical perspective
You are alone, and you alone are active.
9
Reaching across the infinite abyss
Between the souls which came this weary way
Across the extinction and apocalypse
Desire turns into love for somebody
Who is as distant as the pallid stars
Or our old predecessors. Separately
We’ve journeyed with a fate which is just ours.
I thought of this when I got to the house.
10
I embraced them each in silence and sat down.
My wife had laid the table, my young child
Was drawing something; and the older one
He glanced from me to some book that he held
In the other room the television screen
Was lit up; such the recreated world.
The echoes of the future and the past
Were here and there. But I was holding fast
11
To what the present moment had to give
Of the ideal and the eternal form
Which people are unfolding when they live
In time and in the timeless outside time.
There would be time to find out and to prove
Where the afterlife is different or the same.
But surely, only those who wanted it
Were breathing in this world, as God had said.
12
“What will we do now? It’s not like before,
The world has ended,” so the youth inquired
Of me. I said: “I suppose we will explore.
Work and investigate.” Thus, it appeared,
The children were just my children once more.
The round red wood stained table, it was laid
With plates and place mats on the table cloth
Photos and paintings hung in their old spots
13
The door toward the kitchen was ajar
My wife was taking something from the oven
I felt the warmth through the radiator
It was like being home, all normal, even.
I thought to hug them all again, aware
That this was needless, being now in heaven.
“What are we going to do?” the boy was saying
And I was smiling back at him replying:
14
“We don’t need to do anything. We’ll go
From one day to the next, and we’ll enjoy
The gift of life, we’ll see how the new winds blow.
It was created perfect every way.
We’ll work, explore, and learn and come to know.”
“Shall we go travelling on a journey?”
“We’ll see the depth and heights, the east and west,
The whole earth will be our main interest.
15
“And we’ll enlarge our minds with every science
To reveal all the powers latent inside
The destiny of homo sapiens
In constant commerce with the will of God.
And then to outer space, we’ll take machines
To other worlds, as yet unknown and hid.
Forever making, with our maker forever
To be like him in mind and in endeavour.”
16
That’s how the voyage through all time and space
Resolved itself. That’s all I have to tell:
Of me and them I loved in our old house.
My wife sat down, she let me serve the meal
A European dish you’d call lobscouse.
Having passed through the darkest parts of hell
And having been tested body, soul, and mind,
In better places, one more thing remained:
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