Alphabet

All your lives, all

Trying to get to N, to Q, to S

Finally attaining R, grasping

For Z’s perfection

Through expanded effort, greater grit

More pluck and better luck

You’ll grab the heavens filled sky

Shakespeare, Einstein, now allies

But you’re searching plots full bare

We Others know

You’ve gone nowhere

All tongues of this galaxy from post-math to parrots

And you’ve defined the Khmer word for carrot

Chronic inspiration for genetic constipation

You don’t begin to comprehend time

How light, space and dark mass rhyme

You’ll have to start to anew

But you’re good at it

Perhaps we’ll talk again

In a thousand years?