Aged Dust

Shattered, without hope in the wind,
Whirling where the world's face ends
Itself coldly ended without power of naming
Any future, or caring how to name -- knowing
That one and another are not preferred
But are same. Not even glumness shadows
The lost decision from which complete indifference seems
Eminently respectable.

And fire not even a memory to the face, and the world's
Face so over-remembered, it is a loss to try
To tell one from another past, or pry futures apart.
Paint it, and it stays painted; deny, and it will
Oblige by disappearing. Call it and it will be.
Be one with it and it will color you so gray
That your name will be arbitrary and your
Face vanish in the world.

Fight it and it will oblige endlessly. These
Are the molecules that will not disperse nor harden but
Will endlessly prove the barren ice of time.
How it stretches into the horizon, telling nothing because
Nothing is.

This is the heart of dying, hell
Beyond the hope of measure, f
For space is denied. But,
What mastery within! To make so little from so much,
To so completely nullify, must be the handiwork
Of a truly great machine.

So dust has its master, and if you only
Congratulate him, he will withdraw,
Sated with your precious admiration.
You who command admiration command all things
And dust's dry dominion dwindles to your light.