THE LAST BLACK HOLE

was not the last. The last black hole
was everything in the entire universe
collapsed into a space even smaller
than you can imagine. The last black
hole was the end of time, and then
there is a whole new universe, but
not the one we know, The one we
can imagine, where nothing of us
survived, not even the tiniest speck,
except maybe the rediscovered
truth that before us, there was a time
we could not know and that after us
is another time, but you knew that,
didn't you, that every truth we have
is a human truth, that as long as
we're the ones looking, everything
will always look like us, and as sure
as every human will be born and die,
there is only our time, our journey
to the black hole and our journey
away from it, and don't be discouraged,
we do not give birth astride the grave
as some have said, but rather we are born
into a picture in which we are only a pixel,
and as pigment shall never know
the painting, so we are fixed within our
place, and we must not fear because
we cannot see the design, and this
I call faith, knowing that the last blak
hole is coming, and on the other side
will be time and space, and on the other side
will be time and space, and on the other
side will be time and space
but without us,

by Jason SCHNEIDERMAN, in "THE POETRY REVIEW", Volume 104: 3, Autumn

(post 1st edition, 2014; 2nd edition, 2020)