U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limon was asked by NASA to write a poem for the upcoming Europa Clipper mission. Her new poem, “In Praise of Mystery: a Poem for Europa,” premiered late last week in Washington, DC.
Here is the poem from the Library of Congress (and you can also hear it in the poet’s voice):
Arching under the night sky inky
with black expansiveness, we point
to the planets we know, we
pin quick wishes on stars. From earth,
we read the sky as if it is an unerring book
of the universe, expert and evident.
Still, there are mysteries below our sky:
the whale song, the songbird singing
its call in the bough of a wind-shaken tree.
We are creatures of constant awe,
curious at beauty, at leaf and blossom,
at grief and pleasure, sun and shadow.
And it is not darkness that unites us,
not the cold distance of space, but
the offering of water, each drop of rain,
each rivulet, each pulse, each vein.
O second moon, we, too, are made
of water, of vast and beckoning seas.
We, too, are made of wonders, of great
and ordinary loves, of small invisible worlds,
of a need to call out through the dark.
Amazingly, this poem will be engraved on the exterior of the spacecraft.
NASA has done a great job stimulating scientists, but this is a great stimulus for budding poets as well.
