Is it that in the Beginning is the Word ?
Life's meaning through a simple sound conferred?
Would thought or emotion , flicker into life
if it were never spoken , never heard ?

The Word in all its essence ebbs and flows
Its moment in Creation comes and goes .
Inchoate , it wavers but a little time
till it has fled . But where ? nobody knows.

The Cheetah and Gazelle , with frantic speed
driven by fear or hunger in their need
race for their lives through deep Savannah grass
and in the end the weaker one must bleed .

I heard a voice across the desert cry
Take heed or you will finish as did I !
Some whispering dust across this barren place ,
A short breath tainted with the grossest Lie.

A voice that through the wilderness is crying
Life's a long death in a chapter filled with dying
telling but once again that which we always knew ,
that mortal message which there's no denying .

The flames that leave a Bushland black and bare
with nothing alive,burn less than those that spare
nothing within me , Heart and Soul and Mind,
So that seeking Solace -- I find nothing there !

With Nothing left , then what is there to grieve ?
And a Nothing gives a Nothing to retrieve --
The blankness of the all encompassing Night
is all that my departing hence would leave .

Yet after all , the Coward's last device
could never be for me the worthwhile price
for Pleasures' absences , though base or fine ,
making of Abstinence my only Vice.