This article, that I've read this early morning, about Voyager 2's journey beyond the solar system, has me thinking of long distances, in space and time, and the ways in which the frenzy of the present can almost entirely obliterate our capacity to have a longer view than three seconds into the future and four feet in front of my face.

Sometimes we benefit from thinking in wider time scales, and toward deeper horizons, than those we typically inhabit nowadays.  For me, sometimes, the dislocation so provided "re-sets" me in my everyday existence.  It may be why I enjoy so much the practice, it's almost a habit now, of waking up very early and letting the day emerge out of the darkness for me.

When I think of things like this, I always think of W. H. Auden's poem "The Fall of Rome".  There are many things about this poem that are beautiful, especially (for me) Auden's exploitation of the capacity of meter to surprise (pay special attention to the last two lines).  But it's also beautiful in its visionary capacities:

 

The Fall of Rome

 

 The piers are pummelled by the waves;

 In a lonely field the rain

 Lashes an abandoned train;

 Outlaws fill the mountain caves.

 

 Fantastic grow the evening gowns;

 Agents of the Fisc pursue

 Absconding tax-defaulters through

 The sewers of provincial towns.

 

 Private rites of magic send

 The temple prostitutes to sleep;

 All the literati keep

 An imaginary friend.

 

 Cerebrotonic Cato may

 Extol the Ancient Disciplines,

 But the muscle-bound Marines

 Mutiny for food and pay.

 

 Caesar's double-bed is warm

 As an unimportant clerk

 Writes I DO NOT LIKE MY WORK

 On a pink official form.

 

 Unendowed with wealth or pity,

 Little birds with scarlet legs,

 Sitting on their speckled eggs,

 Eye each flu-infected city.

 

 Altogether elsewhere, vast

 Herds of reindeer move across

 Miles and miles of golden moss,

 Silently and very fast.