by Irene Han
Art by Amanda Dai
Issue: Mirage (Summer 2014)
You think you are infinity.
Rightly so, you believe,
Leaving your superficial mark on nature’s verdure.
Collecting tokens of your superiority,
Scrapes of sky, plots of earth, fruits of her labors.
Frankly, your ignorance surprises me,
How this “man of science” can be so blind to his own mortality.
That inevitable oblivion unknown
To your pretentious species.
You think you are eternity,
A worthy adversary to time itself.
Have you not met me, the devourer of all things,
My omnipotent form of which you name your “history?”
Greater beings have fallen under my winds of change,
And you have the audacity to challenge me in your petty triviality?
May your arrogance condemn you
To your own imminent downfall.
You are a mere trifling,
Some accidental, irrelevant being,
Wallowing in vain, narcissistic beliefs.
Tell me your strength as your world falls to that ultimate fatality,
Your works dissolve into nothingness,
As I will surely, slowly sweep your insignificant names into anonymity.
Then, conceited one,
Challenge me again.