Wise and now-departed uncles

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.