TIMESLIPS
THE MEANING
Based on a strange dream about a long search and then returning to find myself
in a world where everyone I had known was long dead.
My masters had told me to look for a meaning
To the riddles of life, if there was such a thing,
So I searched for an answer in worlds still in their wombs,
Pursuing the meaning in worlds dead in their tombs,
And battled with ogres on planets unknown,
Through the vastness of infinite space was I thrown,
And I found them no meaning in the black voids of space,
Discovering no reasons as I travelled the wastes.
Though only ten years did my wanderings last,
On the jewel of my Earth three thousand had passed;
My masters and comrades forgotten, long dead,
Their quest for a meaning from men’s minds long since fled,
The search stranding me in alien times all alone,
I have only memories of my culture long gone;
A new people have risen from my race which fell,
And I’m here, so alone, in my futurist hell.
TIME RUNNERS
Also based on a dream from around the same time.
Many years on now, our hearts have grown cold,
Man’s once indomitable spirit has failed and grown old,
Enslaved to the aliens who came out of the skies;
Who conquered our race and now dictate our lives,
Our frail bodies are fettered but our minds are still free,
And escape to the places a body can’t flee,
Passing through the great vortex to new facets of time,
We’re breaking out of our bodies to live in our minds.
Our minds live in facets in both time and space,
In past worlds or in parallels unknown to our race,
Worlds which might have happened had a dictator not died,
Or post-nuclear deserts where few people survive;
In any place the inner self can be free,
We live out secret lives in our own history.
I’ve lived a thousand lifetimes in different ages, different places,
But they always seek me out and send me back to the enslavement of my race
THE RETURN OF MAN - THE CAT NEVER LEFT
Note: This crept into my consciousness partway between sleep and wakefulness so I wrote it down as I "heard" it.
It rambles at the end because I was waking up and the "voice" was becoming incoherent.
Alone I came, returned from afar,
Travelled slumbering from a distant star;
Back I came to the womb-world of my birth,
Some thousand years after leaving thronging earth.
Gone! The proud steel girders and the concrete edifices
Which rose into the grey sky - hive-like megaliths.
Gone! The machinations and the monuments of man,
Only earth's own flesh and rocks remain.
Last night, the wary hunter came to my lonely fire,
The memory of a memory of man burning in her genes.
Did her forebears grace the mat before men's fires,
In some long forgotten era of Angora, Rex and Siamese?
How many generations has man been gone from here?
How many years since the last human disappeared?
Did he dream his dreams of powe? See those dreams dissolve to rust
As works decayed till only rocks remain while cat looked on?
Did he outlive the initial desolation?
Bereft of the trimmings and trappings of civilization?
Were his muscles inadequate to the task
Of survival when the mechanical cradles failed him?
And all the while, felines nurtured wildness in their hearts ,
Against the day when man was gone and cat remained?
Last night the wary hunter came to my fire,
In search of scraps. My fireside friend has outlasted man.
But opportunist always, renews the ancient bond,
But never loses the wilderness within.
Where is man, his brain ten times the size of hers?
Where has his computerized cleverness taken him?
I return to find a pet has outlived all human cleverness,
Stayed untamed within despite man's best endeavours,
Gone! All man's proud constructions gone!
Gone! His manipulations of genetic plasm.
Only the rocks remain - haunted by the feral child of a hearthside friend,
And yet still choosing to share a fire with men.
TO LIMARI
Based on a recurring dream about a telepathic elite
We are centuries apart, you and I,
Separated by the heavy veils of time,
Yet I know you with a lover’s intimacy
Though only in my dreams we chanced to meet;
Creation mine. But Oh! my un-met friend,
I know that in some future day you will exist;
I see it in the flash of golden eyes,
The twist of darting unspoke thoughts,
And in your smiles,
And already I know each tiny twist
Of your as yet unconceived mind.
As intimately as any lover I know you,
All the thoughts we’ve shared across the years,
Oh telepath unborn and yet I know
You will exist, my visions show
To me your face and we have shared
Our thoughts without the need for words,
But the centuries between us are a wall,
A barrier my body cannot cross
To meet the lover I would claim,
And who I’ve seen, and whose name
Shines golden as his eyes within my heart.
Oh fair telepath it is no fault of ours
That we are kept apart by centuries,
For I know that in some future time
You will exist.
No vain creation of my psyche; idle dreams,
No derangement of mentality made you,
For I have seen the world in which you dwell
And love not the things that there I’ve seen,
But I love you.
Never to meet, what torture can this be,
To be misborn and never cross except in sleep,
When out thoughts reach out, across the years I range
To find you in a world which now is changed
Beyond all knowing yet is mine
As it will be, but in your time;
My love, by time estranged.