Meaning?

Time and again you get up and stare out
with sleep lidden eyes,
searching for a meaning.

Why ask for meaning when there is none?

The atoms dance their indifferent dance,
Born, mutilated, destroyed, born again.
Until by chance a pulse appears.

An amoeba.
Then trees.
Mastodons.
Reptiles.
Mammals.
(Which order? Who knows)

Then reason,
Cruel, liberating
takes birth in tiny islands of protoplasm.
And Loss, Nostalgia become words.
And yearning takes the form of prayer.
Jehovah, Jesus, Muhammad, Krishna-
Lighthouses to a lost race.
Teachings become platitudes.
Religions they fostered, decay.
And lonely Gautama looking down on Rajagriha,
understands.

Romes flourish, fall.
Pompeii, Machu Picchu, Harappa forgotten.

Copernicus, Galileo and a touch of humility.
And Darwin, humbler still.

Wars:
A race driven insane when the half-truths it
clings on to are questioned.
Moral imaginations soar, plummet.
Never an absolution.

There is and never shall be any meaning here.
Only an endless, insatiable restlessness.

-Abhilash Mishra