They will blow me up
because to them, I don’t matter.

They will cut me up and down,
and to them it won’t matter.

They — who are they?
If I name them, will it matter?

Abbreviations, nicknames, designations —
none of that will matter.

This is old, bedrock-old, and so cold;
glacial ice at the heart of this matter.

They showed up here as ground-down losers.
Where they’re from, they didn’t matter.

One by one, those lost boys and girls
grew up to think they are all of matter.

The rest of us — the rest of me — insubstantial
to them; that’s the core of this matter.

To them I am a crude ghost from past conquest.
To them, I am anti-matter.

To me, I am solid and they are smoke.
To me, to us? None of them matter.

Their world will burn as ours once did.
Nothing left but the hardest matter.

I have proved, we have proved how hard we are.
In the end, what will last is all that will matter.