Stars

The stars were constancy itself
to ancient eyes, the heavens’ wealth
   immutable in circuits.
The shifting stuff of earth below
all surely longed to up and go
   reposing where the sun sits.

But lovers of the stars did find,
as planets opened to their minds,
   that lines were looping oddly,
and perfect circles ever strayed
elliptical and retrograde;
   so monks enquired, godly.

Their monkey fingers, well-peeled eyes,
and astrolabes probed sneaking skies,
   frustration ever mounting;
the sexagesimal old years
could not translate the rolling spheres,
   into their human counting.

But even when Copernicus
revealed the sun was turning us
  (news welcomed by the Pope then),
the stars could not retain their place
as changeless beacons out in space,
   as things most apt for hoping.

For soon we learned that every day
they slip a little more away,
   forever further fetching;
and all the maps that we have known
of heaven, set as if in stone,
   we should in wax be etching.

One day on earth there may then be
a sailor on an unlit sea,
   set for some destination,
who fathoms not how, at one time,
some pin-pricks in the air gave rhyme
   to human navigation.

What else could we all but elect, 
what better totem all erect,
   to stand against devolving?
Yet even these, bright lights and still,
will spurn then turn and burn their fill,
   and point past their revolving.