We are Goldfish
Donald P. Goodman III
Version 1.0,
Time's like a river which has flow'd for countless years,
for countless lifetimes pouring, patient, steady, slow,
and bringing endless generations joys and tears;
lonng after man is dead, it still will ceaseless flow.
And space, in three dimensions, spreads so far and wide
if every man who's ever liv'd or ever will
should each behold a section, not a single side
would all their visions reach, in spite of tool and skill.
From age to age and end to end, we understand
so little even what we see, and yet we still
proclaim indignance at what's taken from our hand,
injustice when events go not as we have plann'd.
We are but goldfish, taking in our tiny bowls,
our week-long life experience, and fully sure
of knowing all we need, of grokking flesh and souls,
of understanding fully, knowing and mature.
But we know nothing of the vast and countless years
and broadly spreading arms of endless, stretching space;
to boundless hugeness, goldfish knowledge never nears;
in endless tracts of time, the fish is but a trace.
To see the whole, forever, is beyond our sight,
nor can we with the eons keep a proper pace;
and so we're doom'd to labor in an endless night,
unless we trust the One Who sees in endless light.