The Death of the Nighttime Sky

Fluorescent lights are everywhere,
searing my eyes,
blinding me.
Xenon signs blare statements—
OPEN! EAT NOW! SHOP HERE! BUY THIS!—
neon greens and blues and pinks and glaring reds
almost audible
over the cacophony of car horns
and the roar of traffic
and people coughing, or chatting, or rushing past
and millions of machines running, buzzing, beeping, whistling.
The sky darkens, and the streetlights switch on—
more metallic buzzing, jarring to the ears—
a sickly orange glow
coating everything, a slime
slick over the streets, the skyscrapers, the cars, the people,
even the sky above.
I look up,
try to see past the artificial orange,
the bright neons,
but the sky is dead.
All that remains is black emptiness.

Yet only five half-centuries ago,
before the factories, those great metal beasts,
were built along the once-clear rivers,
before the discovery of the black rock, born of death,
that gave rise to their putrid, black smoke
choking the air and the night sky,
that vast expanse above the Earth
was more than a void drowned
in ghastly orange.
The universe lay spread-eagle across the sky,
its stars, planets, constellations, meteors
laid bare for all to gaze unabashed,
its contours a reflection
of the life, the potential, the sheer beauty
of the untamed Earth below,
inspiring Man to reach for the Heavens
in song and in legend,
in scripture and in myth,
in philosophy and in science.

A child immersed in sound and light,
his senses sated, inundated,
his attention flitting
from one stimulus to another,
never focused for more than a few seconds.
He withdraws briefly, suddenly,
searches for another stimulus,
another attention getter,
looks out the window, up.
But the sky is dead—
drowned in the lights
and the sounds
of Progress.
The child submerges once more.
He doesn’t reemerge.