Poem: “An Inscription”

by Pavel Chichikov on May 19, 2013 in Poetry

An Inscription

We wandered through the hills of Earth
That were before so gray and mean
That now by eon-founded birth
And sweet spring rain were young and clean

Once we saw a rock smoothed off,
A surface on it faintly scribed
(It was an April tender, soft
The rain had washed, the sun had dried)

There we saw a testament
Of those whose strength had shrunk away,
Somehow prideful-innocent
Now that time had stripped their sway

The stone preserved some pictographs
Near worn by weather, delicate,
Oblique, the morning sun’s contrast
Revealed the method of their fate:

Ignore the mess it goes away
Insist we look we go away
We won’t care when we are dead
We leave this world to you instead

This inscription made us laugh:
Our predecessors’ epitaph,
How bright and sweet the morning sun,
The season’s growing just begun

Pavel
April 5, 2011