Requiem for a Curious Man

When dead, then let my worthless body burn,
my ashes throw into the silent air;
on earth no hole shall give my name a place.

We rowed through darkness with your precious urn.
There was a splash, a bubble sobbed somewhere.
Yet, friend, creation has preserved your trace.

The trace leads up; your pillow is star.
Your dream? You see a golden ladder rise
and youths ascending white and black and brown,

rung after rung, reach out and touch afar
a light, heart-formed, that gleams into the skies.
The pilgrimage is endless up and down,

and they are changed. They radiate and glow.
Filled with your conscience and your intuition,
they act now with dimensions infinite.

Their will and purpose crush what’s base and low and stop the atom from its hell-bound mission.
They carry in their heart a holy writ:

We are cosmic substance, co-creators, we,
of all that was and is and what shall be.

And these, my friend, were your last words to me:
"Have always holy curiosity.

William Hermanns