Good Morning!

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Welcome to The Coffee Shop, just for you early risers on Monday mornings.
This is an Open Thread forum, so if you have an off-topic opinion burning
a hole in your brainpan, feel free to add a comment.

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Either the Darkness alters –
Or something in the sight
Adjusts itself to Midnight –
And Life steps almost straight.

– Emily Dickinson

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From long before Shakespeare’s “that I should love a bright particular star” and into a future well beyond Coldplay’s “you’re a sky full of stars,” Love and the Stars have been and will be frequent metaphors in love poetry and song lyrics. Human beings are fascinated by love in all its facets, and by the ever-mysterious night sky. That is unlikely to change in the future.

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“A Sky Full of Stars”

by Tim Bergling, Guy Berryman, Chris Martin,
Jonathan Buckland, and William Champion

‘Cause you’re a sky, ’cause you’re a sky full of stars
I’m gonna give you my heart
‘Cause you’re a sky, ’cause you’re a sky full of stars
‘Cause you light up the path

I don’t care, go on and tear me apart
I don’t care if you do
‘Cause in a sky, ’cause in a sky full of stars
I think I saw you

‘Cause you’re a sky, ’cause you’re a sky full of stars
I want to die in your arms,
‘Cause you get lighter the more it gets dark
I’m gonna give you my heart

I don’t care, go on and tear me apart
I don’t care if you do
‘Cause in a sky, ’cause in a sky full of stars
I think I see you
I think I see you

So sky, you’re a sky full of stars
Such a heavenly view
You’re such a heavenly view

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English poet T.E. Hulme imagines that even a man “sleeping rough” on the Thames embankment might find solace in the night sky.

The Embankment

(The fantasia of a fallen gentleman on a cold, bitter night)

by T.E. Hulme (1883-1917)

Once, in finesse of fiddles found I ecstasy,
In a flash of gold heels on the hard pavement.
Now see I
That warmth’s the very stuff of poesy.
Oh, God, make small
The old star-eaten blanket of the sky,
That I may fold it round me and in comfort lie.

^{On 28 September 1917, four days after his thirty-fourth birthday, T.E. Hulme suffered a direct hit from a large shell which literally blew him to pieces. Apparently absorbed in some thought of his own he had failed to hear it coming and remained standing while those around threw themselves flat on the ground. What was left of him was buried in the Military Cemetery at Koksijde, West-Vlaanderen, in Belgium where—probably for want of space—he is described simply as ‘One of the War poets’}

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American poet Ted Kooser shows us his view from an airplane window.

Flying at Night

by Ted Kooser (1939 – )

Above us, stars. Beneath us, constellations.
Five billion miles away, a galaxy dies
like a snowflake falling on water. Below us,
some farmer, feeling the chill of that distant death,
snaps on his yard light, drawing his sheds and barn
back into the little system of his care.
All night, the cities, like shimmering novas,
tug with bright streets at lonely lights like
his.

^{“Flying at Night” from Flying at Night: Poems 1965-1985, © 1980, 1985 by Ted Kooser – University of Pittsburgh Press}

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My husband proposed to me on the roof of the Griffith Park Observatory, with the stars just beginning to come out in the
sky above us, while a carpet of glittering lights were winking on
in the city spread out below us. So I have a deep affection for
the Romance of the night sky and its earthly echo.

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^{Alas, the only way to see the Milky Way at the observatory now is at the planetarium show inside.}
(The last time I saw this many stars above the observatory was in the blackout after a major earthquake) 
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