The human question

What drives a man,
to work and bleed?
To give this life his all
To walk across the barren lands
to walk nowhere at all?

We cannot think there's a promised land,
no golden city shining fair.
Each time the horizons crossed,
never was it there

Then why do we keep rending flesh
and working till we bleed?
To build a city where we stand
and make it gold indeed?

No.
For we know Gold as, sin it is
and justice as unfair
To build a golden city here's
to build a thieves lair

Why not end it then,
never take another step
never lift another brick,
nor use hand or head

To lie down, across barren sand
and watch all fade away
To look upon ye building mighty works
just to shrug and say:

"When the wiles of time have passed
nothing here will stand
Not you, nor bricks, nor empires
not even dunes of sand."

Yet somewhere there is yearning,
to be more than this.

Our curse is not our engine,
our unending human drive
Our curse is blasted reason,
the ability to see

To see the road ahead of us,
to know it's all in vain
We know where our journeys end,
and our beginnings are the same

Nothing is the word for it,
and nothing it describes
Nothing
will be the final state of life

We know the start and know the end,
The rest is to be seen
But Nothing haunts these pictures,
Next to it they are but dreams

Fireworks in deep dark night,
Astounding us with flashing light.
But the flash soon fades away, and the light goes too
and so dear reader, so are you.