The first ones,
those who built everything
worthy of the name,
and named it,
better than we could ever hope to;
Those who built the viaducts that last,
not merely for millennia,
but forever,
or as close to that
as we could ever get,
and a little bit farther too;
Those who occupied every planet
worth having,
before anyone else
even got out of diapers,
who sucked the juice from the heads,
and stuffed the first mushrooms;
they probably invented mushrooms,
and maybe heads as well;
Those who used up fabulous elements,
making remarkable machines
that almost worked
when some younger races
heaved themselves out of the slime;
machines that don't really work now,
but if we could only get more
of those ultramundane elements
we could surely do something with them,
maybe just not as good.