Intimation

Two talkers passed me on the quiet street,
Treading toward doomsday with unconscious feet,
And spoke in careless voices, friend to friend,
Words that sped echoing to time’s last end:
‘When all is said and done, you may be right.‘
Idly they laughed, hearing no endless night
Sound in the echo, ‘When all’s said and done’ —
O little phrase, dark with oblivion,
In whose small syllables the fires that burn
Through smouldering centuries of summer turn
To icy ash; fountains of fiery gold,
Spattered in winter skies, stream charred and cold
Down a dissolving firmament! How strange and small
These mortal words in which the heavens fall,
Flinging the starry garlands of the sky
Into abysses of eternity
Where is no earth, no moon, nor any sun
When all is said and done!