Cosmic indifference XI

Skies cannot speak, but…

Through the beaks of the ravens

We sing life’s refrain

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Authors note:

This poem is part of a series, I intended for each haiku to stand alone as an entry in the sky-ku challenge.

But as I wrote them I felt a story kind of piece itself together, of a life lived out under a beautiful but indifferent sky. I tried to convey the absurdity of individuality under the blanket of an infinite and infinitely distant universe. The narrator struggles with a lack of purpose and looks in vain for a sign from the heavens but finally gives up and dies. Only after death (perhaps literally, perhaps figuratively) does the narrator abandon the need for purpose and let go his ego, to join with the cosmos and go on living as part of the sky— integrated into the very matter of the ravens.

This brief project was inspired by the field of absurdism as a whole, and by the conceptualization of human life and thought as a momentary burst of awareness, wherein and whereby the cosmos can know itself.

If this line of thought is interesting or compelling to you I recommend the following videos narrated by astronomer and philosopher Carl Sagan.

I don’t know whether he identified with absurdism and doubt he’d define himself that way. But to me he always seemed like an optimistic absurdist, willing to bend towards charitable existentialism.

Anyway, his videos are thought provoking:

If youre interested in reading the full continuity of the cosmic indifference haikus, you can start with the first one here: