How did the world at last die?
One day the final excavation
pulled up peg and pup-tent,
loaded trowels and picnic tables
onto the last land-rover
and drove way;
the last lost city mapped,
its treasure troven and ransacked;
final undigested artefact that turned up
popped into a plastic bag;
the last smudged glyph deciphered.
All the diggings were deserted,
last dives made,
the final relic separated from the pediment;
a sunken statuette, the very last one,
salvaged from the slime;
the last keel rotted away;
the ultimate bottle washed ashore
and its secret noted.
Last stone, cut or uncut
was uncovered by a river,
clawed free of the rack;
the final ingot was extracted
and the last unstable element
was cornered in a mine.
The utmost fossil was hammered clean;
or thawed out of the permafrost;
The skulls of all ancestors disinterred
and tapped by men with little hammers
so their echoes could be placed on record;
memories wrung out
of the last surviving dithering inhabitant.
The next day it had all been cla**ified;
a label placed on each,
and the last true statement penned
and full-stopped to the final monograph.
And there was that.
The items sparkled in their cases
set out as the best discernment could arrange.
The people walked past reading numbers,
nosing catalogues,
and went back home again beneath the charted stars
across an empty earth.
The present, finally, was equal to the past.