Post-Hamlet

And if you could escape, where would you go?  The undiscovered country does not seem to have a shore, only coves where the rock cliffs are nearly as tall as the moon’s reflection on the clouds.  There would be little there to do, for time would have evaporated earlier, in the human sphere, before the planets evolved into cold shadows, or dust particles, or brief, hot flames, as the vacuum consumes them.  But if you made it, climbed up hand over hand for a few millennium, not bothering to wash or eat, or sleep, not concerned with the daily things that defined your life back home, things you remember at least for a moment, before they too are part of the stone in front of your face, then you might stand atop the white cliffs and feel the chimeric sea breeze, or hear the echo of real gulls, almost taste the fine salt air.  But the vacuum soon consumes you again, and this new world, like the old in its swirling momentum, turns in toward the last sun, and beyond that the black holes tease you with the possibility of starting over.  Somewhere else?  Some when else? Perhaps in the before, even at a time when Ophelia still loved you, and no one had mentioned the desire at the heart of your mother’s crimes.

- George Moore