Liber Neptuni - Chapter 34

Verses

Neptune was found first in mathematics and only afterward in the sky: a world entering history as a correction to an equation.

Its year is longer than a human life, so no one watches a complete season there and remains the same observer.

The planet has no ordinary surface on which a pilgrim may plant a flag and misunderstand the achievement.

Hydrogen, helium, methane, pressure, heat: the sacred vocabulary is sometimes a table of measurements.

The winds move faster than the stories we invented to explain them.

Dark storms appear, wander, and vanish. Even enormous weather does not receive permanence.

Voyager passed once and kept going, a brief witness traveling into a darker archive.

Triton moves backward around its adopted world, likely captured rather than born obedient.

Its geysers rise from a moon cold enough to make activity seem like a contradiction.

The rings are faint because not everything that circles power wishes to glitter.

From Earth we call the planet blue, though our cameras, processing, and expectations have all helped compose the blue we remember.

Science does not destroy wonder. It removes the obligation to lie for wonder's sake.

There is majesty in a wind that requires no angering god.

There is terror in an abyss that requires no intention.

The universe becomes stranger when allowed to be innocent of our metaphors.