The Fruits of Knowledge

Once when the Sun was married to the Moon,

Our World was thought their rightful girl or boy,

And so our earthbound realms were thought and hewn

From selfsame substance, all with equal joy.

Joy in the marriage of the high and small –

Joy in the faultless, sounding sphere on sphere –

Joy in the high king’s festive golden hall –

Joy in the smallest hearth on his frontier.

But then the moon and world were turned to rock

And then our sun became just one of trillions

And ever new cosmogonies did shock

And left us standing by a cliff in billions,

Aghast and staring into an abyss,

While eight or nine proclaim the black hole bliss.