A man staring at his equations

said that the universe had a beginning.

There had been an explosion, he said.

A bang of bangs, and the universe was born.

And it is expanding, he said.

He had even calculated the length of its life:

ten billion revolutions of the Earth around the sun.

The entire globe cheered:

They found his calculations to be science.

None thought that by proposing that the universe began,

the man had merely mirrored the syntax of his mother toungue;

a syntax which demands

beginnings, like birth,

and developments, like maturation,

and ends, like death,

as statements of facts.

The universe began,

and it is getting old, the man assured us,

and it will die, like all things die,

like himself died after confirming mathmatically

the syntax of his mother tongue.