Ladies and gentleman, we are floating in space
> His spirit is exhausted at the peak of its achievement. His meridian is at once his darkening and the evening of his day.
See the men, they throw furniture into the fire; all is burning well. The engines drink heat hungrily as we accelerate into the future. This is the path of progress! A rocket arcs far into the sky.
We have now burnt the house entire, see how far and fast we fly! Trains were not enough, now we wish travel further faster yet. Rocketry well symbolises the last long century; all smells of ignition and scorched earth.
And now, what’s this? Here we drift in space. There is nothing left to burn. Brothers bicker needlessly over the inertial revolutions of what amounts to space junk. Some deluded by shadowplay even shed blood.
This no longer a ship, nor orders claimed any longer hold sway. Some say the captain was found, a suicide sitting before empty envelope; nothing in the safe either. Where successive heirs ransacked cabins and shouted wild slogans, now a quiet dismay.
See we sit stave despair with games or drink ourselves to death. The place is left a mess, litter amasses in furthest corners. There pests multiply and sepsis sinks below yet never will this die; still a skeleton crew acts the part of a convinced cargo cult.
If we do this, that, the other—then the true and good will return. By what means can a world begin anew? This is the ark.
Here I think, well, perhaps I should expand upon this piece; or at least proofread. I should speak of how we once lived in a cosmos, and that it was the rationalisation of this which amounts to the symbolic burning indicated above. I could tell of how the tree of knowledge was pulped and turned to paper, that thereby man reaped the fruits of technical progress at the cost of the all which once provided shelter for his soul. Now the world a void, shown by map—the Psalter, the Gough—and so on. I could write of all this, more and much, thus make my case; but really what does any of that matter? Better to play cryptic with purple prose than pretend this somehow serious!