Now that no one looking at the night— Sky blanked by leakage from electric lamps And headlights prowling through the parking lot Could recognize the Babylonian dance That once held every gazer; now that spoons And scales, and swordsmen battling with beasts Have decomposed into a few stars strewn Illegibly across an empty space, Maybe the old unfalsifiable Predictions and extrapolated spheres No longer need to be an obstacle To hearing what it is the stars declare: That there are things created of a size We can't and weren't meant to understand, As fish know nothing of the sun that writes Its bright glyphs on the black waves overhead.
From Invasions by Adam Kirsch. Copyright © 2008 by Adam Kirsch. Reprinted by permission of Ivan R. Dee. All rights reserved.