An nihil ate

An nihil ate

"Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold..."
- W. B. Yeats, "The Second Coming" 

"One must have chaos in oneself in order to give birth to a dancing star."
- Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathurstra

The last man is riding
On the back of a beast
Slinking, slouching
Toward the center point
That cannot hold,
That is slipping outward
To the razor's edge.

And this madman rides
Upon this mad, mad beast
With a lion's grin
And a glint in his eye
And a pool of drool on his chin.
The reins are flying,
Since he let them go
Not caring to steer
Or to utter commands
To a deaf, rabid beast
That cannot hear
And does not care
But is creeping towards home
As it crumbles away.

When they come to the edge,
Both rider and beast,
Of the world they have trodden
And pounded down into dust,
They look into the void
At the eddies of stars
That are swirling, ecstatic,
Long freed and unfixed,
For the body of God
Is dismembered and torn,
And his mind is unhinged
Like a wobbling gyre.

But the fool and his beast,
In the light of a sun
That has risen in darkness,
Sending light through the void,
Start to dance on the dust
Of planets and stars,
Start to sing and to howl
As they leap on the bones
Of the gods and the priests
Who have died on their thrones
When confronting the chaos
Standing just outside their gates.

As these fallen lords rave
And feast upon themselves,
The fool and his beast
Step out into the void,
Fall in through the central
Singularity's door
And dance on the chaotic
Vortex of things
Plunging into themselves
Like a sparkling primrose
Closing inward at the dawn.

As the fiery stars fall,
And the corpses of gods
Blow away on the breezes
That whip through the void,
The fool and his beast
At last reach their home,
The abandoned home of God
That was built upon air
Out of crystalline sand,
Ad together with a mighty puff,
They blow it down into a heap
And lie upon it, like a bed, to sleep.

Image credit: Hlamo, from Wikimedia Commons, as a public domain image.