You Are Not Other Men

National Review, March 10, 2008 by Robert Mezey

YOU ARE NOT OTHER MEN

   They will not save you, those from whom you sought
   some help, no, nor the writings they left behind;
   you are not other men, and now you find
   you are the center of the labyrinth wrought
   by your own footsteps. Neither the last breath
   of Christ or Socrates nor the deified
   golden Siddhartha, who unresisting died
   at day's end in a garden, saves you from death.
   Dust, like all that, whatever words you write
   and dust as well the pitiful words you say.
   Fate will have no pity anyway
   and God's night is an everlasting night.
   You are made up of time, and you are in it.
   You are each single, solitary minute.