Poem: Triple sunset

Jatan Mehta

Jatan Mehta

— 1 min read

Here lies the bathing light of the red dragon,
deepening horizons on a world so foreign

Yet much like a heaven that is our Earth,
there could be water on its surface unhurt

Could there be life too on this land of the triple-star,
would they also figure out who they are?

Would they comprehend the distant binary-star show?
that they are the suns of the one they know

Oh what a view it would be,
for life there to see

But if on that world
there isn’t any,
let it be the carved destiny of humanity.

Part of Seven uni-verses, my globally published poetry pamphlet.

A near-sunset view with mountains and the sea beyond, as imagined for an exoplanet in a system of three suns. The other two distant suns shine to the right of the big one about to set.
This artist’s impression shows a near-sunset seen from the super-Earth Gliese 667 Cc. The brightest star in the sky is the red dwarf Gliese 667 C, which is part of a triple star system. Image: ESO / L. Calçada

Poem notes: This is a poetic follow-up to my article ‘How Isaac Asimov used science fiction to point out our biases’. I’ve retrospectively discovered that the poem also relates to the vivid science fiction story of The Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu.

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