Light Pollution and the Stars

As the city aggrandizes itself, it carelessly obliterates the night sky. On the clearest night these days, no more than a few stars are visible from my neighborhood. Artificial light spreads and engulfs all with its perpetual gaudy clarity, hiding the natural obscurity that once provided the divine backdrop highlighting the distant presence of the most ancient light, thus serving as man’s daily reminder that his soul is a microcosm.

The sparkling blanket of heaven that once afforded men the humbling comfort of finding each and every lost loved one or hero accounted for within its infinite expanse is reduced today to a few sparse points twinkling faintly, just barely beyond reach (for how long?) of the inescapable emanation of earthly brightness that is gradually devouring the cosmos.

This may be the punishment for our modern hubris. Manmade light is becoming eternity’s impenetrable veil.