Forest of Pillars

Titans. Sentinels.
Colossal monuments of ancient stone.
Seemingly numberless, vanishing
into the mist
Like a silent army poised
in a valley vaster than vastness
far as the beholder beholds

Young humanity, ever marching
with science and steel in ceaseless conquest
placed them at our feet
than those unspeakable enormities of cliff and shrub
we stand higher, on our pedestal of power
We look out upon them as above clouds

Yet even up here
lifted in the fancy
of humanity’s seeming victory
The mere man
surveying the conquered landscape
cannot but tremble
at the expanding, shattering image; stumble
smothered in the blanketing embrace
of ageless, inexorable nature
In the dizzying consciousness that the very stone
hard and strong beneath his weak feet
is but the speck of the hubris of Man
hewn in tiny steps and paths
upon the awful shoulder of an unfeeling giant
for which the dawn and rise of our age
is but a wink in a long and ancient dream