There was a time—a brief and final time—
When all the world seemed rich enough to last:
The Permian at the edge of its sublime
And complicated order, the vast past
Three hundred million years arrived at this:
An evening of the age, a gathering
Of all that life had built, a final kiss
Of ordinary beauty—Dicyno scattering
Across the Pangean plain in morning light,
Gorgo watching from the ridge above,
The sea in all its Paleozoic bright
Abundance—and above and below, the love
Of creature for its living, for the air
And water and the food and the den made
From nothing—the Permian was fair
In this last hour before its fade.
The gymnosperm forests on the ridgelines stood
In their new quiet after the coal swamp's loud
And tropical confusion—a subdued
And arid landscape, but a proud
One—the cone-trees on the red rock plain
Like dark green candles in the desert air,
The reptiles basking in the afternoon
Of Permian summer without care
For what lay under the earth of Siberia—
What lay beneath the frozen north
Of Pangea's shoulder—the bacteria-
Rich basalts cooking in the worth
Of the planet's own deep heat, building
Pressure against the surface crust
In what geologists would call the gilding
Of catastrophe—the subterranean gust
Of magma seeking every crack and seam
In the Siberian basement rock
Toward the surface, in a patient dream
Of eruption ticking like a clock
That only the earth could read.
The world above knew nothing of this clock.
Cynos in his burrow heard no creed
Of doom beneath the cooling rock
He dug his den into—he heard
Only the insect sounds of night,
The wind across the cone-tree, the stirred
And dry debris of the desert's light.
Gorgo on her ridge at sunset watched
The herds of Dicyno moving to
The water-source at dusk—she notched
The old and slow one in her view
And felt the preparation that she always felt
Before the hunt—the tightening, the focus—
And the world she hunted in had dealt
No sign of change, no notice, no locus
Of warning she could read.
And yet—
Deep in the rock of Siberia, a breath
Of gas leaked through a fissure, wet
With sulfur smell—an early death
Of ordinary air in one small place
Above the coming fire—a hiss
So faint that nothing with a face
Or ears could hear it—just the fizz
Of what was building, just the first
Small exhalation of a world
Preparing to unburden its thirst
For the surface—the first curled
Edge of the killing that was coming.
Take this image: the world entire
At table—every living thing consuming
Its evening meal before the fire.
The reef below the Permian water
Feeding on the current's plankton bloom;
The Dicyno herd, the predator
Who watches, all within a room
Of ordinary evening, ordinary
Necessity of life—and somewhere north,
Deep in Siberian rock, the ordinary
Becoming something else—the north
Breathing its first breath of sulfur out
Into the still and unknowing air,
And all the world at table, with no doubt
Or grief, eating what was there.
This is the last supper of the age—
Not dramatic, not foreboding,
Not announced upon the stage
With thunder—just the corroding
Of ordinary evening into the eve
Of extraordinary ending—and the meal
Continues, and the creatures do not grieve
What they cannot see or feel.
Honor the last evening of the Permian—
The ordinary beauty of the full
World eating, sleeping, hunting, and therein
Finding the day's grace—the pull
Of one more sunrise in the unknowing
Before the morning that would change the world.
The cup was coming, not yet showing—
And all of life sat gathered, unfurled
In its abundance, in its ancient peace.