A Sunday Poem for another day

A Poem For Sunday, originally, but now it's a poem for today or any day you read it. Here via Andrew Sullivan (source of copious and varied web curation as well as Sunday poems), the excerpt below is from The Awl, which also has videos and interesting articles.

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An excerpt from "My God, It's Full Of Stars" by Tracy K. Smith, who won a Pulitzer this week:

Perhaps the great error is believing we're alone,
That the others have come and gone-a momentary blip-
When all along, space might be chock-full of traffic,
Bursting at the seams with energy we neither feel
Nor see, flush against us, living, dying, deciding,
Setting solid feet down on planets everywhere,
Bowing to the great stars that command, pitching stones
At whatever are their moons. They live wondering
If they are the only ones, knowing only the wish to know,
And the great black distance they-we-flicker in.

The poem continues.

(Footage from image sequences from NASA's Cassini and Voyager missions, from Sander van den Berg, via Philip Bump)