If You Should Love Me:

If you should love me,
Love me not for my words,
For I am so much more than my words,
And so much less.
Love me, if you would,
For I am of Star Stuff made.
I was there at the Big Bang,
And I will be there when
The show closes,
And the final curtain falls.

And if you would love me,
For I am of Star Stuff made,
Love too yourself,
For you have been with me
On this journey,
As have all others,
And all things, ever,
Which have been parts of us,
And we, parts of them,
Be it the child dying of starvation,
Or the linnet singing out with joy.

And love me too for being a child of
The ineffable,
That is all love,
And breathed life into me,
And gave me that part of it
Which we call soul,
As s/he did with the dying child
And the merry linnet,
And celebrate that s/he
Did the same for you.

All is of Star Stuff made,
All is ineffable mystery,
And so it is that I am me,
You are you,
So too the dying child,
And the singing bird.
Though it makes little sense at times,
Know that it is, and does
To an ineffable something
Which we can name as Love,
And rail against for all the misery,
All we cannot understand,
Though we of Star Stuff are made
And will always be.

And consider, too, the atoms
Which came to form me
And you,
The bird,
The child,
And have crossed both time and space
Since 13.7 billion years ago,
Making this, making that,
Changing but always, always surviving.

Consider, too, those atoms,
As 3.8 billion years ago
They joined
In that most precious of states,
Life!

Think now on how through
Those billions of years,
That which is you
But is not all of you,
Changed, through struggle,
Death and rebirth,
Time after time after time,
And at the last your direct
Sentient and humanoid ancestors became,
The first in the line,
Just 6 or 7 million years ago,
The blink of an ineffable
Eye in the history of all
That is and ever has been.

Love me too for my tenacity
Over 13.7 billion years.
Love me for the breath of the
Ineffable that gave me soul,
And love yourself likewise
And all other things besides;
The linnet and the babe,
The enemy and the friend,
The beasts and our planet home,
For we are all joined as one,
And we all are of Star Stuff made.