Amidst our troubles, a sudden blessing:
Look up. There’s a comet in the evening sky.
An omen for a pharaoh, caught retracing
Its half-forgotten summit in the evening sky;
Two burning tails—one gas, one ice—arousing
Ancient tumult in the evening sky;
Debris of a lost planet decomposing,
Gypsy diplomat in the evening sky;
Debut of life on earth, its ice dispersing
Facts too intimate for the evening sky.…
Traces of comet in us. This burning, this freezing?
Let’s just blame it on the evening sky,
The music of the spheres in us, rehearsing
Across the gamut of the evening sky.
But—see?—the comet’s already devising
A shortcut past the limit in the evening sky,
And when it comes again, we won’t be witnessing.
Who will even claim it in the evening sky?
What’s left of us may well be improvising
Our own last-minute plummet in the evening sky.