Monday, August 13, 2018

Christopher Hopkins writes

Renaming stars

A sea of ancient deity.
The forever evolving things.
Our sea of burning dust.

       We named them as gods
       and from their place we found our path.

While the whitening eye of the moon
feels its way,
touches of the dead light falls on all the living.
How some buds flower by the moon.
Others wait for the wash of morning
to bring their colours out,
when Nyx has been forgotten,
and the stars have been renamed as other things.
       The forever evolving things.

These flashes of days,
this very moment,
hurtle, out into space,
light years away.

One day,
               maybe we could catch them up,
running faster than light can take,
and walk amongst the days again.
To look at ourselves,
             by the light of stars and moon.
             Wonder how we found our way,
             by the forever evolving things.

How we didn't even know their names.
 
Light Blue Starscape -- Kenneth Ober

1 comment:

  1. Nyx was the Greek goodess of the night. (To the Roman she was Nox.) Hesiodos claimed she was the daughter od Chaos, the 1st of the primordial gods (followed by Gaiai [Earth], Tartaros [the underworld], and Eros [love]). She procreated with her brother Erebus (darkness) to produce Aether (brightness) and Hemera (day), and then, on her own, spawned Moros (destiny), Kerers (destruction), Thanatos (death), Hypnos (sleep), the Oneiroi (dreams), Momus (blame), Oizys (distress), the Hesperides (sunset), the Moirai (fates), the Keres (death-spirits whom Marcus Tullius Cicero called the Tenebrae, the "Darknesses"), Nemesis (retribution), Apate (deceit), Philotes (friendship), Geras (old age), and Eris (strife). She dwelled in Tartarus with her sons Hypnos and Thanatos, and when she went home her daughter Hemera left, thus causing the diurnal cycle. Later, Orpheus claimed that she (not Chaos) was the 1st principle from which all creation emerged. She resided in a cave or sanctuary at the edge of the cosmos, where she gave oracles while, chained inside, Kronos (Time), asleep and drunk on honey, prophesied in his dreams. Outside, Adrasteia ("Inescapable"), who had hid Zeus from his father Kronos to protect him from being swallowed up by him, chanted and danced with cynbals, ecstatically moving the universe to her rhythm. In the Orphic tradition she was also the mother/wife of the hermaphrodite Phanes, who created daytime and procreation and was the original ruler of the gods; he passed his authority to Nyx, who gave it to her son Uranos (sky), who lost it to his son Kronos who in turn lost it to Zeus. Aristophanes called him Eros and claimed he was born in an egg created by Nyx, mated with Chaos, and created the birds even before the other gods came into being.

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