Pale Blue Dot

 

Walking along the banks of a lost river,
that I remember, used to be.
Forlorn, feeling empty, finding it hard to focus,
tired, teary, and in an urgent need for some water,
I came upon a bottle of some kind.

Transparent like glass,
but made of some unbreakable substance.
But no opening that I could see at a glance,
neither a cork nor a twist top, what kind of bottle it was?

Foggy inside, a piece of paper of some kind
with some strange letters, and,
unknown symbols in different colours, floating in it.

A bottle with no mouth, but it spoke to me!
When I shook it the letters on the paper inside it
started to melt in the fog.
Their rainbow colours dissolving and resolving themselves,
and a sound started to emanate from it
Ouummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
which started to turn into a song in a language, I didn’t understand.

But the music swayed me, and I shut my eyes, dancing to the tune,
forgetting everything else in its lore,

Karagre Vasate Lakshmi, Karmadhye Saraswati, Karmule tu Govind, Prabhate Kar Darshanam.

I was calm after a long- long time, almost happy,
and not thirsty anymore.

Suddenly the bottle started to vibrate,
and it slipped out of my shaking hand.
I opened my eyes, the bottle had gone,
taking away with it, its colours, its rhythm, and the music.

I slumped down again when I heard a sound,
“Look above, oh fool, look again, and despair”.
I looked up, and saw the bottle just above me
hanging up in the air.

It had grown a bit in size, and was rounder too,
like a glass ball rotating slowly on its axis.

Mesmerized, I looked on.
The fog had cleared, and the colours floating around in it
were re-forming in dots of such bright colours,
spectacular, sparkly, and pristine.

The white dots condensing into balls of cotton,
started to melt, and lo behold
it started to rain inside the bottle.

The bluest possible colours appeared with dots of green
and dark blue swimming in it,
all increasing in size, turning into
blue ponds, hills and trees, lush and green.

The brown and black dots appeared, turning into circles, and
little figures of animals, birds, and butterflies could be seen
going around the ponds, the hills and the trees.

With awe and wonder and my mouth agape,
I heard a sound of laughter,
a group of people emerged in the most beautiful attires,
made in rainbow colours, even brighter.

Holding hands and hugging each other,
they started singing and dancing around the ponds,
the hills, and the trees, going round and round.
I started to hum with them,
my feet starting to dance with their sound.

Never in my life had I been this happy, and lighter
I felt like flying, as my body soared up to hug the bottle.
My glass bottle, it was marvellous, I thought!
I will keep it, I will cherish it, I will worship it!

It was all mine, I smiled!
But the rotating bottle had started going up
higher and higher, and further away
I looked with a great feeling of loss, and dismay!

“Wasn’t it beautiful?”

I heard the sound again, right in my ear.
The bottle was getting smaller and smaller,
like a pale blue dot disappearing in the blue sky!
While the sound in my ear was getting louder and louder
like an ominous cry:

“Didn’t it sustain you?”

“Didn’t it heal you?”

“Didn’t it grant you life?”

“Oh, what came on you to destroy it, oh you poor fool!”

Notes

Inspired by Miller’s 1975 poem, If the Earth Were Only a Few Feet in Diameter

Miller, James. 1975. If the Earth Were Only a Few Feet in Diameter. Issue 297 Resurgence and Ecologist, July August, 2016, p. 28.

“There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.”

Carl, Sagan. 1994. Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space. New York: Random House, pp. 6 –7.

Modified from a poem I wrote in 2019, and recited at the Sydney Writers Festival 2019 under the title A Martian’s Letter to an Earthen man!