"what they will have taken so long to realize was that the crash itself harkened the end of an aeon and the beginning of a new. what they will barely have been around to see the genesis of would be the slow simmering of the darkened spot; etched in the roiling iron sanguine swhorls; the deepening and the turning of the blackened spot. as if an absent leaf had fallen into its shadow and begun to consume itself: the black gave way to a forest green, and in the heart a glowing jade phosphorescence. within ten million years the unutterably complex microbes will have formed themselves into co-independent constellations. within ten-span that time, the fruits of that gathering will have extended symbolic pseudopodia, as countless will have done before; and the tendrilled intentions of these essential and distilled beings will have swept their mourning gaze over ancient and speckled ruins, dust and girders. they will have scouted, they will have surveyed, and they will have moved on by way of a re-insemination of this vessel, and the former globe will have become a petri dish once again. the eye itself, now glowing a verdant amber swirled with bluish jade, will have gazed on through the night. they will have made their way, then, outwards. in a tremendous leap, not of faith, but of desperation. they will have erected no monuments; only the silence stays." "To have gathered from the air a live tradition or from a fine old eye the unconquered flame This is not vanity." - ezra pound