There are stars I cannot name.

Their light travels for aeons, 

before finally arriving at the small, upturned face

of someone who will never reach them.

We measure and we tinker,

teaching telescopes the arithmetic of distance,

naming these distant fires.

The human mind trespasses

into a vastness it cannot comprehend.

The universe continuously expands

beyond the bounds of our knowledge.

To Kant, this was the sublime:

the mind reaching for a magnitude

the human imagination could never contain.

To conceive of infinity isn’t to possess it;

a hand can always point towards the heavens

yet never touch the sky.

This is perhaps the peculiar tragedy of being human:

Wanting a world that will never run out of things to give.

There are languages I will never speak,

cities whose cobblestone paths my feet will never tread,

books that will outlive my desire to read them.

There are people I will never meet,

versions of myself I will never become,

knowing that every choice I make

branches whole lives away.

‘The world is my oyster,’

but I beg to differ.

An oyster cannot promise me

more hours in the everyday,

another body when this one grows weary,

nor another lifetime to begin anew.

What is freedom,

when there isn’t enough time to be free?

Eventually, the stars will perish too. 

Their immortality is only the name

we give to a duration

too immense for our little lives.

In time, they will burn,

collapse, surrender.

Disappear into the indifferent darkness

from which they emerged.

And I, who cannot comprehend the universe,

am unable to even grasp the entirety

of my own brief existence.

Perhaps, there is no answer in looking upwards.

The sky has never promised me one.

Still, I look.

Not because I believe I will understand,

nor because I can bear the thought

of everything I shall never see,

but because somewhere beyond me,

beyond the reach of my hands,

the light is travelling.

And for this moment,

I am here to receive it.

Image: timjl via Pixabay