Strike me some chords upon your mandolin,
        for I am no sorcerer of music.
        I play with words in worn out combinations
        to befool myself into thinking me a bard.
        But words are forever changing, dying,
        and there have been so many written down
        in the endless tongues and cunning shapes of man,
        in cuneiform and hieroglyphs
        now as dead as these letters one day will be.

        I am enamored of speech's fickle beauty,
        but when the last word is said upon our planet
        we shall leave some tapes behind to sing the sorrow
        of our farewells as we plunge through unknown space
        in search of warmer suns where we will mouth
        outlandish sounds to deathless notes brought with us.

        Those songs will come too late for me to hear,
        so play me all the tunes you know lest time run out
        and I must launch my spirit craft into the void
        in my own search for the warmest of the suns.

        March 26, 1971