In this near darkness of the human hour
Our inquiring eyes, can only look higher,
Over times’ hierarchy, the day’s disguise,
Up, up into the starless terror of the skies.
It seems there’s no maker here, only ‘we’
To stop and make sense of this enormity;
If a maker once there was, then she
Tinkers now, in corners of obscurity.
Across the world’s end and the year’s
Stretch the walls and fires of our fears,
As in an emptiness, as impossible as love,
A blue planet looks over us, silently above.
Notes:
Earth-rise : photograph taken by astronaut William Anders,
from Apollo 8, December 24, 1968.