Going abruptly into a starry night <br />It is ignorance we blink from, dark, unhoused; <br />There is a gaze of animal delight <br />Before the human vision. Then, aroused <br />To nebulous danger, we may look for easy stars, <br />Orion and the Dipper; but they are not ours, <br /> <br />These learned fields. Dark and ignorant, <br />Unable to see here what our forebears saw, <br />We keep some fear of random firmament <br />Vestigial in us. And we think, Ah, <br />If I had lived then, when these stories were made up, I <br />Could have found more likely pictures in haphazard sky. <br /> <br />But this is not so. Indeed, we have proved fools <br />When it comes to myths and images. A few <br />Old bestiaries, pantheons and tools <br />Translated to the heavens years ago— <br />Scales and hunter, goat and horologe—are all <br />That save us when, time and again, our systems fall. <br /> <br />And what would we do, given a fresh sky <br />And our dearth of image? Our fears, our few beliefs <br />Do not have shapes. They are like that astral way <br />We have called milky, vague stars and star-reefs <br />That were shapeless even to the fecund eye of myth— <br />Surely these are no forms to start a zodiac with. <br /> <br />To keep the sky free of luxurious shapes <br />Is an occupation for most of us, the mind <br />Free of luxurious thoughts. If we choose to escape, <br />What venial constellations will unwind <br />Around a point of light, and then cannot be found <br />Another night or by another man or from other ground. <br /> <br />As for me, I would find faces there, <br />Or perhaps one face I have long taken for guide; <br />Far-fetched, maybe, like Cygnus, but as fair, <br />And a constellation anyone could read <br />Once it was pointed out; an enlightenment of night, <br />The way the pronoun you will turn dark verses bright.<br /><br />William Morris Meredith Jr.<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/starlight-25/
