Have looked up
And seen the stars remain the same:
The same as ever?
How many eyes,
Human and not human,
Explorers and navigators,
Poets and artists,
Have looked up
From their small crevasse of years?
How many eyes
Have squinted with wonder
Widened with the effort of seeing,
Puzzled the unfathomable mystery,
The palpable beauty,
Questioned the distance,
The magnitude,
The luminance,
Of all the un-numbered stars.
The stars are suns like ours.
They are burning fireballs hung in space,
So immensely distant
That their light is only a pinprick in the vast black of heaven.
How many eyes bear witness
To the season’s edge
To the cusp of day and night,
To the storm-front clearing after rain?
How many eyes will see the stars
Among the rising tides, the iron-stained sand
On a beach
Or in the faint sky behind the setting sun,
Or in the rustling of leaves when the wind
(Itself an echo of starlight)
Touches the forest edge and all the atoms that wood is made of?
© BH, 2005
This was written for mobile planetarium planetarium shows in the early 00's: part of a collaboration with artist, Gill Russell and cosmologist, Francisco Diego.
When I say written, I mean, Gill edited down what I'd written to something manageable.
It's the way of the universe.
This is the long version as originally written. The shortened version as edited by Gill and including the audio she recorded is here for comparison.
No comments:
Post a Comment