[Video: zooming in from a Milky Way-wide view all the way to galactic cluster NGC 3324, dubbed the Gabriela Mistral Nebula for its resemblance to the profile of the Chilean Nobel Prize-winning poet. Music by John Dyson; original video at the European Southern Observatory (ESO) site.]
From whiskey river:
And as you sit on the hillside, or lie prone under the trees of the forest, or sprawl wet-legged on the shingly beach of a mountain stream, the great door, that does not look like a door, opens.
(Stephen Graham [source])
…and:
Coincidence and chance and unsearchable causes will now and again make clouds that are undeniable fiery dragons, and potatoes that resemble eminent statesmen exactly and minutely in every feature, and rocks that are like eagles and lions. All this is nothing; it is when you get your set of odd shapes and find that they fit into one another, and at last that they are but parts of a large design; it is then that research grows interesting and indeed amazing, it is then that one queer form confirms the other, that the whole plan displayed justifies, corroborates, explains each separate piece.
(Arthur Machen [source])
…and:
The World Loved by Moonlight
You must try,
[The above poem’s] source was a sentence written by Chekhov in a letter to a young writer: “If you want to move your reader, write more coldly.” The advice is chilling, true, and rich, I think, and leads in many different directions of thought. This poem follows one of those directions: that if one were to imagine a world in which there were mythic, conscious deities, then those beings would have to be very cold, very detached, in order to bear seeing what they must see in the course of any given day. So much suffering, so much foolishness, so much anger. To be able to watch that at all — and even more, to play some active role in its continuance — would demand total heartlessness. It’s the same lack of pity that Virgil demands of Dante as they tour the regions of Hell. Pity, the ghost-guide tells the poet, is forbidden. It is true for the contemporary writer as well, and for any seeker after truth. A certain detachment is needed to look the fullness of life eye to eye; yet that very detachment is what permits the viewer to feel things fully, to know them without blinking.
the voice said, to become colder.
I understood at once.
It is like the bodies of gods: cast in bronze,
braced in stone. Only something heartless
could bear the full weight.
(Jane Hirshfield [sources: poem and commentary])
