we are that

       

.

We are the children of this beautiful planet that we have lately seen photographed from the moon.  

We are not delivered into it by some god, but have come forth from it.

We are its eyes and mind, its seeing and its thinking. 

And the earth, together with its sun, this light around which it flies like a moth, came forth, we are told, from a nebula; and that nebula, in turn, from space.

So that we are the mind, ultimately, of space …


—Joseph Campbell
Myths to Live By

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Every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart 

whispers back. Those who wish to sing always find a song. 

At the touch of a lover, everyone becomes a poet.

—Plato

.

As long as nothing can be known for sure

(no signals have been picked up yet),

as long as Earth is still unlike

the nearer and more distant planets,

as long as there’s neither hide nor hair

of other grasses graced by other winds,

of other treetops bearing other crowns,

other animals as well-grounded as our own,

as long as only the local echo

has been known to speak in syllables,

as long as we still haven’t heard the word

of better or worse mozarts,

platos, edisons, elsewhere,

as long as our inhuman crimes

are still committed only between humans,

as long as our kindness

is still incomparable,

peerless even in its imperfection,

as long as our heads packed with illusions

still pass for the only heads so packed,

as long as the roofs of our mouths alone

still raise voices to high heavens  

– let’s act like very special guests of honour

at the district firemen’s ball,

dance to the beat of the local oompah band

and pretend that it’s the ball

to end all balls.

I can’t speak for other –
for me this is misery and happiness enough:

just this sleepy backwater
where even the stars have time to burn
while winking at us
unintentionally.


—Wislawa Szymborska
the ball

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