Author: Aditi Bedarkar
The record forever spins in space,
On loop the tale of the year
That orchestrated the fall
Of the human race.
T’was but a twitch in the hands of the clock
Hanging on the outer wall of the boundless world,
A grain of sand in the sand-clock of the gods,
Spanning not even a heartbeat of the cosmos
Was this solar year,
But how it has brought
The greatest life to have lived
To its knees, breath rattling in coughs.
O dwellers of the universe hail,
The tale,
Of that being
Which took and snatched and burned and slayed,
Of the year when the final curtain fell,
And the human let out its final exhale.
For millennia, they ruled the corner of their world,
Losing their purpose with every passing year,
“Come twenty-twenty,” they said,
“We’ll heal all that we’ve ailed, don’t you fear.”
Time waits for nobody, they say.
You shall win and you shall rule but time will have its way.
Oh the folly of the human race,
To fold and fold the years to chase immortality,
For just a taste,
All to crumble come Judgement Day.
The ruins now lie,
Honest echoes of the days bygone,
The year that the humans lost their reign,
It took one crowned germ to topple their throne
Gasping for breath, raging, they fell alone.
They fell alone.
Killed the human in themselves as they had centuries ago,
No home to see in another,
Even in death,
Any unknown a foe.
The judge, jury and executioner,
Time took its own.
They were dead long before,
Twenty-twenty ever raised its sharpened sword.
The record now spins,
Unseen,
Unheard yet,
Singing to an indifferent void
Awaiting the acknowledgement of the universe,
To close the chapter,
To grant
Humanity
Closure.