Alan Rickman Sound Gallery

I look at the changing sea and sky
And try to picture eternity;
I gaze at immensities of blue
And say to myself "It can't be true
That somewhere up in that abstract sphere
Are all the people that once were here,
Attired in white and shapeless gowns
Sitting on clouds like eiderdowns

Plucking on harps and twanging lutes
With cherubim in their birthday suits,
Set in an ageless, timeless dream
Part of a formulated scheme
Formulated before the Flood
Before the amoeba left the mud
And, stranded upon a rocky shelf
Proceeded to subdivide itself."

I look at the changing sea and sky
And try to picture infinity;
I gaze at a multitude of stars
Envisaging the men on Mars,
Wondering if they too are torn
Between their sunset and their dawn
By dreadful night-engendered fears
Of what may lie beyond their years
And if they too, through thick and thin,
Are dogged by consciousness of Sin.

Have they, to give them self-reliance,
A form of Martian Christian Science?
Or do they live in constant hope
Of dispensations from some Pope?
Are they pursued from womb to tomb
By hideous prophesies of doom?
Have they cathedral, church or chapel?
Are they concerned with Adam's Apple?
Have they immortal souls like us
Or are they - less presumptuous?