you think

1

you think poetry matters

but then you think that about everything

even breathing

2

you think that

& I can't convince you otherwise

but really, to be honest

nothing matters

it's all in vain, everything in life

without meaning

just mist

we pretend to be granite

3

I shall let you have

your illusion that Sappho enduring 2600 years

would mean something in a universe

where stars can live trillions of years

(while getting the last word,

that I will let myself claim)

4

breathing stops

time deletes poems

flesh falls away from Homo

left in geological strata

humanity dies a second time

as the aged Sun immolates the Earth

& AIs run simulations of us in the cold of the Oort cloud

& again

you believe that poetry matters

whether they get the fragments right or just make them up

& who knows whose simulation this already is?

15.09.2019