When you look at the carpet of stars
spread on the loom of night,
you see the history of the universe.

The mortal’s eye cannot find sleep
except in the embrace of these distances.
He thinks they were left as a rich legacy
to generations yet to be born.

They’d have the will and might to move
the forefinger from the peak of their mountain
to some new, seemingly unknown crags of fire –

but subsiding, letting them think
that the names of their forefathers,
like a flock of starving sparrows,
are strung across the plump face of sunrise,

while they, poor souls, perish in the void
whose name isn’t death but migration –
the suffering of an eternal quest.

Looking at the canopy of stars,
you see the entire history of your kin.