An ancient part

· by · in dVerse, poetry. ·

It’s hard imagining
an ancient star
inside a constellation seen
from the earth’s perspective
to have a meaning
for a planet where its heart
is sunshine far away
in a time already gone
before a human
could imagine it to be a part
of a lion or a battle
in a midwinter sky.

Map of the Southern Sky, with representations of constellations, decorated with the crest of Cardinal Lang von Wellenburg, and a dedication to him with his coats of arms and the Imperial copyright
Albrecht Durer

Today Dora prompts us to write about night and stars at dVerse. I wrote something quickly that crosses into my background as a scientist.

July 14, 2026

26 responses to “An ancient part”

  1. A fanciful way of thinking about something that is profoundly difficult for us to grasp — Time passages that leave us ever in the relative past. I love the way you use the the graphic to show how quaint our understanding was and can be.

    • As mentioned elsewhere, I was teaching about Greek Gods and one of the things I brought up was why those symbols were created. Along with Björn’s poem and picture here, it makes me feel the ‘poetic’ nature of our trying to describe things before we know about them. Do we know too much now? Will the knowledge we have now be seen as more ‘poetic’ in a few thousand years time?

      • It may be that we “know too much now,” but do we have the understanding. I think underlying knowledge itself is the more problematic nature of our understanding, wisdom if you will. And in that sense, I think poems are a way of understanding, squeezing meaning out of knowledge, experience, just as philosophy and theology try to do. A poet though, I’d like to think, takes the way of beauty and creative expression, like Homer. Are his gods archaic? They were the best way the ancients had of understanding the chaotic nature of life. Those gods, so very much like the mortals they governed became mirrors of human nature itself.

  3. a meaning
    for a planet where its heart
    is sunshine far away

    It’s great to capture the feelings when it is far away. Knowing it holds out is to acknowledge an existence. Good shot Bjorn!

    Hank

  5. Humans have been following the sky since the beginning of time. I guess we are still trying to grasp its vastness.

  10. The concept of light being a way of looking back in time to the very origins of the universe is a hard one to grasp, Björn…

I try to reciprocate all comments. If you want me to visit a particular post, please direct me directly to that post.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.