Starlight
By William Meredith
Going abruptly into a starry night
It is ignorance we blink from, dark, unhoused;
There is a gaze of animal delight
Before the human vision. Then, aroused
To nebulous danger, we may look for easy stars,
Orion and the Dipper; but they are not ours,
These learned fields. Dark and ignorant,
Unable to see here what our forebears saw,
We keep some fear of random firmament
Vestigial in us. And we think, Ah,
If I had lived then, when these stories were made up, I
Could have found more likely pictures in haphazard sky.
But this is not so. Indeed, we have proved fools
When it comes to myths and images. A few
Old bestiaries, pantheons and tools
Translated to the heavens years ago—
Scales and hunter, goat and horologe—are all
That save us when, time and again, our systems fall.
And what would we do, given a fresh sky
And our dearth of image? Our fears, our few beliefs
Do not have shapes. They are like that astral way
We have called milky, vague stars and star-reefs
That were shapeless even to the fecund eye of myth—
Surely these are no forms to start a zodiac with.
To keep the sky free of luxurious shapes
Is an occupation for most of us, the mind
Free of luxurious thoughts. If we choose to escape,
What venial constellations will unwind
Around a point of light, and then cannot be found
Another night or by another man or from other ground.
As for me, I would find faces there,
Or perhaps one face I have long taken for guide;
Far-fetched, maybe, like Cygnus, but as fair,
And a constellation anyone could read
Once it was pointed out; an enlightenment of night,
The way the pronoun you will turn dark verses bright.
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Tuesday was not as warm as Monday, which is just as well because I had a huge number of things to get done and was only partly successful as a result of having gotten up at 5 a.m. to see the lunar eclipse, then falling back asleep until 9:30. (Eclipse was worth it, and now I'm too tired to watch Democalypse 2022 all night, which is just as well.) Crucial laundry was finished and folded, but pills were not sorted and photos weren't backed up. We did take a walk to enjoy the crunchy leaves and cricket song before dinner (spaghetti) and my Voyager group -- minus the one evacuated for Tropical Storm Nicole -- watched "Hope and Fear" (not too bad though once again it was all about Seven of Nine even in the season finale). Now we're watching Ghosts because we missed the Halloween episode and Thor-and-Baby-Bjorn, which are delightful. From the Sultana Downrigging Festival, Kalmar Nyckel:
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