We give our Pain some Geologic perspective …²
We think so much in terms of Thousands of years—
We have a hard time gitting ourselves through One.³
Once in a hundred years we open our lips to speak
And our voice echoes Mournfully in the Void—⁴
Bowed by the weight of centuries—we Lean—⁵
Geological Eras later …⁶
We have been the same for a Thousand Years
And for a thousand more, we will be the Same.⁷
Hidden by the unstirred, untrodden Siftings
Of how many years—how many centuries?⁸
A billion years, he Winks—another—⁹
It’s not our part here to
Take thought only for a season,
Or for a few lives of men, or for
But a passing age of the world!¹⁰
¹ Philip Whalen, Memoirs of an Interglacial Age
² Christina Olson, Reconstruction Errors, Part 1 & 2
³ Alice Walker, The Color Purple
⁴ Anton Chekhov tr. Constance Garnett, The Sea-Gull
⁵ Edwin Markham, The Man with the Hoe
⁶ Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
⁷ Circe Maia tr. Jesse Lee Kercheval, Discrepancies
⁸ Ursula K. Le Guin, The Tombs of Atuan
⁹ Shinkichi Takahashi tr. Stryk & Ikemoto, Flight of the Sparrow
¹⁰ J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring