G.K. Chesterton - The Song of Quoodle

Ode to Entropy

All change distributes energy

spills what cannot be gathered again.

Each meal, each smile,

each foot-race to the well by Jack and Jill

scatters treasure, lets fall

gold straws once woven from the resurgent dust.

The night sky blazes with Byzantine waste.

The bird's throbbing is expenditure,

and the tide's soughing,

and the tungsten filament illumining my hand.

A ramp has been built into probability

the universe cannot re-ascend.

For our small span,

the sun has fuel, the moon lifts the lulling sea,

the highway shudders with stolen hydrocarbons.

--John Updike