How, knowing that even the universe is dying, do we bear our lives? Most readily, through friendship, through connection, through co-creating the world we want to live in for the brief time we have together on this lonely, perfect planet. The seventh annual Universe in Verse — a many-hearted labor of love, celebrating the wonder of reality through science and poetry — occasioned a joyous collaboration with Australian musician and writer Nick Cave and Brazilian artist and filmmaker Daniel Bruson on an animated poem reckoning with this central question of being alive.
Right this minute across time zones and opinions people are making plans making meals making promises and poems at the center of our galaxy a black hole with the mass of four billion suns screams its open-mouth kiss of oblivion. Someday it will swallow Euclid’s postulates and the Goldberg Variations, swallow calculus and Leaves of Grass. And still when the constellation of starlings flickers across the evening sky, it is enough to stand here for an irrevocable minute agape with wonder.
Couple with Daniel Bruson’s breathtaking animation of former U.S. Smith’s poem “My God, It’s Full of Stars” from a previous season of The Universe in Verse, then revisit Nick Cave on the art of growing older and the antidote to our existential helplessness. — Published October 6, 2026 — https://www.themarginalian.org/2026/10/06/but-we-had-music/ — The Marginalian participates in the Bookshop.org and Amazon.com affiliate programs, designed to provide a means for sites to earn commissions by linking to books. In more human terms, this means that whenever you buy a book from a link here, I receive a small percentage of its price, which goes straight back into my own colossal biblioexpenses.
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