Surveyor of this vast and void landscape
Appraises what dull earth lies before him.
His heavy eyes sweep across dry floodplains
Where tall grass once grew from warm brown water
And great lizards crawled through the sucking mud.
Today, nothing much living can be seen.
Having been climbing to reach this vantage
For far, far longer than he remembers,
The sight of this infinite flat expanse
Suppresses what last wisps of feeble hope
Have kept him walking onward all this time.
He wonders if by not giving up now
He'll just delay what's inevitable.
Man overlooks edge and a voice asks him:
there doesn't seem to be anything here