Ignorant Before the Heavens of My Life
Ignorant Before the Heavens of My Life - meaning Summary
Facing Cosmic Solitude
The speaker confronts the vast, indifferent heavens and feels both wonder and smallness. They question whether the cosmos affects their inner life and resolve to set aside other desires and relationships to cultivate a solitary, clear awareness. The poem prefers a fearful, fully awake engagement with the universe over comfort or soothing closeness, valuing unmediated experience of existence and the heart's "farthest spaces."
Read Complete AnalysesIgnorant before the heavens of my life, I stand and gaze in wonder. Oh the vastness of the stars. Their rising and descent. How still. As if I didn't exist. Do I have any share in this? Have I somehow dispensed with their pure effect? Does my blood's ebb and flow change with their changes? Let me put aside every desire, every relationship except this one, so that my heart grows used to its farthest spaces. Better that it live fully aware, in the terror of its stars, than as if protected, soothed by what is near.
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