ELEGY OF THE FALLING
Elegy of the Falling Noel Glenn When was the last time you went stargazing? The last time you went out under that vast, infinite darkness, and searched out the spots of light punching their way through the infinite, hungering void? Was it summer, when the air is so hot the stars themselves tremble from the heat? When the screaming of the cicadas drowned out even the white noise of your own head? Or was it winter, when the cold silences the land so thoroughly that instead, it is the screams of the stars that reach you? When the howls of the wind only rarely lighten up enough to let the world breath, cold and numb and frozen? Did the cold numb you, did the dark scare you, did the world itself seem at once too big and too little and too much? Did you point the stars out to your friends? Share their names and their stories, the few of them that you could amongst that countless infinity? Did you draw imaginary lines in the sky, give them meaning, give them lessons? Did you listen to others’, argue over the accuracy of these myths you’ve made of uncaring, incomprehensibly massive floating entities of flame? Were you alone, with none but the stars and the night and the abyss to keep you company? Did you contemplate the ground beneath your feet, the earth, the universe? Did you recognize your own insignificance, of you and everyone you loved, everyone you’ve ever known? Did it scare you? Did the size of your whole existence, as big as you feel and as small as you are, terrify you down to the very marrow of your bones? Did it invigorate you? 60
