Stars over Side Farm

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The stars are not interested in us

from their cold and distant seats,

carrion-eyed eagles on eyrie crags.

Our brief fires are missed

in a nebula’s blink –

all our vainglorious attempts

at carving our names

in immortality’s wall,

when with eternity’s erosion

oblivion consumes all,

and to naught they come,

so it seems.

Like the phantom stars,

are we not already ghosts,

our signals transmitting

into the deafening vacuum?

Time’s amnesia makes

our brightest songs fade.

And yet, not to sing,

not to cry out in hope,

in joy, in wild defiance

for even a single firefly day

is to allow the night to paint

the sky in its mourning

silence.

 

Kevan Manwaring