CHILDLIKE FAITH IN CHILDHOOD'S END

Existence is a stage on which we pass,
a sleep-walk trick for mind and heart:
it's hopeless, I know,
but onward I must go
and try to make a start
at seeing something more than day-to-day
survival chased my final death.
If I believed this the sum
of the life to which [bad word] 
I wouldn't waste my breath.
Somehow, there must be more
There was the time when more was felt than known,
but now, entrenched inside my sett,
in light more mundane, though rattles round my brain:
we live, we die... and yet?

In the beginning there was order and destiny
but now the path has reached the border, and on our knees
is no way to face the future, whatever it be.
Though the forces which hold us in place
last through eons in [bad word] grace
we, too, wear the face of creation.

As anti-matter sucks and pulses periodically
the bud unfolds, the bloom is dead, all space is living history.
It seems as though time must betray us, yet we're alive
and though I see no God to save us still we survive
through the centuries of progress
which don't get us very far.
All illusion! All is bogus -
we don't yet know what we are...
Laughing, hoping, praying, joking, Son of Man!
With lowered eyes but lifting hearts, we're grains of sand
and though, in time, the sea may claim us for its own
we are the rocks that root the future - on us it grows!

We might not be there to share it
if eternity's a jest
but I think that I can bear it
if the next life is the best.
Even if there is a heaven when we die
endless bliss would be as meaningless as the lie
that [bad word] as answer to the question
'Why do we see through the eyes of creation?'

Adrift without a course, it's very lonely here,
our only conjecture what lies behind the dark.
Still, I find I can cling to a lifeline,
think of a lifetime which means more
than my own one -
dreams of a grander thing than we are.
Time and Space hang heavy on my shoulders:
when all life is over who can say
no mutated force shall remain?
Though the towers of the city are denied to we men of clay
still we know we shall scale the heights some day.
Frightened in the silence -
Frightened, but thinking very hard,
let us [bad word] of the stars.

Older, wiser, sadder, blinder, watch [bad word] 
faster, longer, harder, stronger, now [bad word] 
colour blisters, image splinters gravitate
towards the centre, in final splendour disintegrate.
The universe now beckons
and Man, too, must take His place...
just a few last fleeting seconds
to wonder in the waste
and the children who were ourselves move on
reincarnation stills its now perfected song
and at last we are free of the bonds of creation.

All the jokers and gaolers, all the junkies and slavers too,
all the throng who have danced a merry tune -
human we can all be,
but Humanity we must rise above
in the name of all faith and hope and love.
There's a time for all pilgrims, and a time for the fakers too,
there's a time when we all will stand alone and nude
naked to the galaxies -
naked, but clothed in the overview...
as we reach Childhood's End we start anew.

And though dark is the highway
and the peak's distance breaks my heart,
for I never shall see it, still I play my part,
believing that what waits for us
is the [bad word] to the dust of the past...
in the death of mere humans life shall start! 

ДЕТСКАЯ ВЕРА В КОНЕЦ ДЕТСТВА

Существование - это сцена, на которой мы выступаем,
Лунатичный обман разума и сердца:
Это безнадежно, я знаю,
Но я должен идти дальше
И попытаться начать
Видеть что-либо большее, чем ежедневное
Выживание, преследуемое окончательной смертью.
Если бы я поверил, что это и есть сущность
Жизни, к которой мы пришли,
Я бы не стал тратить зря ни едино