Atlas of the Sky

The stars: what are they? They are chunks of ice
reflecting the sun; they are lights afloat on the
waters beyond the transparent dome; they are nails
nailed to the sky; they are holes in the great curtain
between us and the sea of light; they are holes in
the hard shell that protects us from the inferno beyond;
they are the daughters of the sun they are the
messengers of the gods; they are shaped like wheels
and are condensations of air with flames roaring
through the spaces between the spokes; they sit in
little chairs;
they are strewn across the sky; they run errands for
lovers; they are composed of atoms that fall through
the void and entangle with one another; they are
the souls of dead babies turned into flowers in the sky;
they are the birds whose feathers are on fire; they
impregnate the mothers …
they portend war, death, famine, plague, good and bad
harvests, the birth of kings; they regulate the prices
of salt and fish; they are the seeds of all the
creatures on earth
they are spheres of crystal
and their movement creates a music in the sky; they are
fixed and we are moving; we are fixed and they are
moving;
the stars
are an enormous garden, and if we do not live long
enough to witness their germination, blooming, foliage,
fecundity; fading, withering, and corruption, there are
so many specimens that every stage is before our view;
we and all the stars we see are just one atom in an
infinite ensemble