The Giant’s Compost

Twenty-seven million ancestors
In your latest family tree, while
Your heart is failing, you can feel

Pain in your writing hand. The findings
You have made together are blazing
And brilliant and can’t save one of you

From the burning or from each other.
What on Earth is the cosmos doing
With you, with us, with any of this?

The more information you heap stored,
The less you find left you can discuss.
Incredible middens filled on trust—

Twenty-seven million ancestors,
Each of whom suffered, all in the dust.