It seems that many in the know
now favour a variation of the proposition
that the universe has always

breathed in and out like a giant lung—
and shall go on doing so forever.
There never was a start, it just goes BANG

and flies apart, then sort of reaches
the end of its elastic and bounces back.
Clockless time is the instrument

that swings it all—except that similes,
metaphors and analogies don’t solve a thing.
In fact, they screw up comprehension—

just as they’ve helped to get it wrong
for centuries—although it has to be said
that this is merely a trifling palpitation

of a micro-second in the greater scheme
of things—but, damn it, there I go again.
So it looks like we are destined comically

to create the same works without end.
Every so-many-billion years Michelangelo
gets another dab at it; Beethoven puts

a trumpet to his ear and blasts away.
And it has fascinating implications:
it’s droll to think that someone

almost like myself, not so very often,
reassembles from a fizz of dust,
picks up a marker, pen or chisel

and shapes letters, runes or hieroglyphs
and generates something rather along
these lines. Again, again, again …