[lit-ideas] Friday Poem
- From: "William Ball" <ballnw@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "Lit Ideas" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 01 Jul 2005 10:38:49 -0400
Odds are....
We soared like eagles on
Our intergalactic "Beagle,"
Swept out of the system
Like an October leaf
On the crest of a tsunami,
Through the Milky Way where
We netted systems not
Unlike our own,
And laid them open
To our confident gaze...
We found nothing.
On to the Triple in Andromeda,
And Messier 33,
Searching, measuring, rummaging
Through fifty million Andromedan novae,
On the way to Cassiopeia...
We found nothing.
Peered diligently
Into Sculptor,
Turned Fornax upside down,
Ferreted even the Region
Of Avoidance...
Nothing.
Penetrated
The Clouds of Magellan,
Sounded the silence
To the limits of
The unbounded...
Full circle!
Full circle, I tell you!
As though back from the dead,
Here, seeing the hairs
On the back of my head,
I have come back to tell you
What the universe whispered
Again and again,
Through the expanding everywhere:
"There's no one else here,
No one.
Absolutely no one...
William Ball
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