Take your degree, and if you qualify,
You’ll be a smart cadaver when you die.
Design machines, become a millionaire,
But when the worms have eaten you, who’ll care?
Get married to a lovely girl and true,
She’ll die and turn to dust the same as you,
Have sons, and sell them half your selfish genes,
They’ll pass them on to thousands of terrenes,
But in the end, your genes as well will pass,
For how long do you think our kind will last?
Or build a granite pyramid instead,
Cleopatra and her kin may long be dead,
But pyramids have stood the test of time,
When man is old, they’ll still be in their prime.
But every artifact, however grand,
Will be reduced eventually to sand,
Even the Earth will slow down and decline,
When aeons hence the Sun disdains to shine.
And when the Sun becomes a shrunken shell,
A white dwarf in the void, as cold as Hell,
And when all Suns are white dwarves or black holes,
The Universe, futility extolls,
And there is darkness to infinity...
What will have been the point of you and me?
**********
magazing five was published in February 1986; editor and publisher Chris Mitchell included Futility, City Kid, The Gambler and Creep - in that order - in this A5 format publication. Shortly, Jenny Chaplin of Writers’ Rostrum published City Kid and The Gambler in A Purpose Strong And Bright, and later in the year I published Creep and Futility in We’re Coming For Your Telecom Shares. The first link below leads to a PDF scan of the original. It includes the front cover, inside front cover (contents page) and all four poems. The pages of this publication are unnumbered.
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