Thursday 12 March 2015

The Hall of Misery (Part 5)


Ennui, 140 million years BC.


                                                                                                                                                        
 Spare a thought for the melancholy plight of the dinosaurs, their bones compressed and sunk ever deeper into the earth by the accretions of geological time. Who among us does not bemoan the six feet of earth that will separate his skeleton from the continuance of life?  What poems have not been written about our encounter with mortality?  And yet all the deaths of mankind are fresh and recent things compared to the deaths of those almost incalculably senior to us, the dinosaurs. 
How paltry our own late deaths seem compared to theirs.  For the game was up long before we started ...   What care they in their stony state for shrew-like creatures, for apes and automobiles?  And what remains of their concerns, their hopes and joys, their quips and quiddities?   
Nothing. 
Nothing remains at all.


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