In Memory of Light

In Memory of Ligh

                                                                   fernandjiromarantal

I was not always cold and faint

My rays not always dim

The burning stars surround me now;

I once was one of them.

I still recall the tiny earth

The dawns I painted red

Above a land whose brilliant green

Is rocky now, and dead.

How distant are those days to me

Which yet my memory holds:

I once was bright, a blazing sun

Arrayed in crimson golds

I touched her face with flaming hand

And felt the azure sky

Her people saw me in the clouds

A white unblinking eye.

Can it be true? I pitied them?

Their microscopic lives

How quickly did they leap for death

Their husbands and their wives

How frantically they spent their days

Upon their grassy sphere

While I was strong, secure from time,

Within my fortress here.

But fleeting was their sojourn there

Beside my astral seat

In all too short a time they fled

Before my rising heat.

My fires grew immense in size

Expanding in the chill

But monstrous though I soon became

Their race flew higher still.

They sent their ships uncounted in

The blackness of the deep

They circled other suns while I

Was lying here, asleep

I wreaked my desolation on

The world I called my kin

And now a plain of ashes lay

Where forestland had been.

Away - away - how swiftly gone

The vastness of the flame

How soon, in place of stellar warmth

The frigid blackness came

I shriveled to a tiny shell

The earth was bleak and cold

Ten thousand newer homes replaced

The human race's old.

They spread throughout the galaxy

Its majesty is theirs

They need no longer fear my wrath

Or fitful solar flares

But oh, my children scattered far

Across the endless night

Do not forget your cradle here

Beside the dying light!