Yours is the last generation for whom
it will be possible to die of old age.
Your children and their offspring –
let’s not trouble them with this.
I record my note for no posterity,
nor for the idea of posterity, which
we understand in terms of years
at best. Milton suddenly unspurred –
would he have persisted? That
is my task. I am putting
everything into the memory
vault so that whatever succeeds us,
though it be unfathomable,
and our artefacts invulnerable
to its comprehension, it will
see that something was here
before it. We, whatever
that might mean, were here.
Image: Arek Socha via Pixabay