Celestial Navigation: Heaven Sailing¹

I Lost a World the other day, has
Anybody Found? You know it by the
Row of Stars around its Forehead bound²
Suffering Human meets face to face with
The Massive Indifference of the Universe³
Let Earth Unbalan’d from her Orbit Fly –
Planets and Suns run Lawless thro’ the sky⁴
Earthseed is all that Spreads Earthlife to New
Earths: its Destiny is to take Root among Stars⁵
We Dance around a Black Hole – Pray it’s a Portal⁶
Human Purposes are pursued within an Immense
Circling Universe which has no purpose at all⁷
Here we are: Plummeting through a Universe
That created us from Shattering and Dust⁸
We set Fire to the Earth itself – then
Leap boldly off into Infinite Space⁹
The Spirit of man is Nourished by
Giving him the Cosmos to Suckle¹⁰

¹ Ursula K. Le Guin, Paradise Lost
² Emily Dickinson, I Lost a World
³ Jimmy Pappas, At My Stepmother’s Deathbed, Twice
⁴ Alexander Pope, Epistle 1
⁵ Octavia Butler, Parable of the Sower
⁶ Adrienne Maree Brown, Emergent Strategy
⁷ Alan Watts, This Is It
⁸ Dorianne Laux, Third Rock From the Sun
⁹ Nathaniel Hawthorne, Earth’s Holocaust
¹⁰ Francis Ponge tr. Beth Archer, The Silent World Is Our Only Homeland