Classic Poem

Truth sometimes comes like this.
Clear, mind-rending like mad fantasy,
A new dimension fills
The spaces of an old expectancy.
Above black crouching hills
Hang globes, mounds, ridges of star galaxy.

This is the tropic night —
Earth lit with a strange light.
The Milky Way leans out
And arches over blackness, pierced with a fine
Cobwebbed haze
Of clear-angled rays
From layer on layer of stars in intricate design.

The northern sky, our quiet dome, is gone.
Within this turbulent depth the mind swings on and on,
Forsaking caution, forsaking the firm earth,
Tempting the outer rims where nebulae have birth,
Clinging lightly to the last known edge of thought,
And flattened by a fresh wind in the face
That blows from an incalculable space.