What is the theme in Vancouver Lights by Earle Birney?

The meaning of life is an important theme in the poem. "Vancouver Lights" asks not what kind of meaning human life has, but if it has any. Writing like a prototypical existentialist, Birney appears to conclude that humanity is responsible for making its own meaning, and it will be responsible for negating that meaning. Birney underscores the randomness of human existence when he refers to history as "feckless," and he emphasizes that emptiness is at the root of life in his figure of the "black Experimentress," an all encompassing darkness that continually threatens to blot out humanity itself.