The Teeming Multitudes

The sun sets — toward what?The sun rises — inheriting what?Stars wheel in a nameless vault,the years turn and turn without looking into themselves.

Without our knowing,ten million years have run half their course,time handed on layer after layer,and who is inscribing where it came from?How many Earth years, replaced over and over,bought a single instant —still, without a sound.

I once dwelt above and watched.Mountains and rivers rose and fell, finished in one breath,civilizations flourished and were ruined, like dust and sand churning.The living run about,the dead return to zero,desire and fear cross into a net,all beings pass back and forth inside it,each believing they are going forward.

And so the words arise:Who fixed the starting point?Who rules on the final stretch?By what are merit and fame weighed,and where does a soul get its name?

Having come to the height,what I saw was ten thousand forms surging.Flourishing and withering stand side by side,gain and loss weigh each other out.No one truly arrives,and no one strays from the path already set.

Suddenly my line of sight falls,and I enter the country of flesh and blood.Cold and heat cling to the body,day and night are held in common.In the echo of a heartbeat,I feel hesitation, pain,and the one shape that longing wants to leave behind.

I lift my head toward the void.The place I came from is not declared,the place I go is undecided.This finite life —must it really prove something?

Then the vantage draws back again.Names and forms come loose,individuals dissolve,language loses its weight word by word in the vacuum.The universe says nothing,yet keeps on turning,nebulae turn over,dark matter resonates slowly —

To exist is simply to be,not to answer anything,and the teeming multitudes are only the universein one long instanttoward itselfechoing again and again,a low vibration.