Once we believed that the Universe
was like a wound steel-spring clock,
the tireless tide of entropy spelling out
the death of both light and rock.
Then we noticed that the darned thing
kept expanding like a rising dough!
Mister Hubble, a very clever man,
taught us to track the expansion's arrow
back to a Big Bang at time oh-oh.
Our Sages said: Behold the work of God!
A Firmament springs out whenever He snaps His fingers.
For the joy of a new mankind it shines and lingers,
then dims, disperses and shimmers off.
Lately, news arrived fresh from orbit
that Hubble, the space telescope,
picked out stars mighty and proud,
yet old enough to have witnessed
our own Big Bang's erupting cloud.
The Sages nodded: Leftovers of yester cycles!
Yester cathedrals with yester spires,
echoing with prayers of yester mankinds
huddled around yester fires.
But Men of Action find such talk flat and stale:
Universe is an eternal horn of fortune, they claim,
a plume spilling goodies into the endless Space.
For us, the Lucky Race, it's like the fairy tale
with roasted pigeons plying through the air.
Theories marching in and marching out,
each a source of its author's fame and clout.
Vanity! Pure vanity! Ezechiel says.
The man is right! After all, for all we know,
we might be watching a superb Disney show.
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Stan Sýkora, Arese 1995
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