The
best news our species has heard in a long time is that Pluto, downgraded from
planet status (Dis-barred?), is still there, teasing and tempting, and now
close enough for us to see the face of our distant neighbor. His looks, for a
dwarf, are cool and remote – “ruggedly handsome,” with that complexion. His
demeanor, for a god, invites only the intrepid. NASA’s New Horizons cruised
silently, a mere 7,700 miles from his face, after a journey of 3.6
billion miles. One female, Venetia Burney, named him. Another, A.E. Stallings,
sings him in “Pluto”:
“Demoted,
he still keeps his distance,
his
elliptical silence. Nothing
changes.
The ferry makes its orbit,
gathering
shades on the farther side.
His
brothers in their separate spheres
dwarf
him. His lot was always this cold
dim
kingdom on the brink of exile,
older
than the name for it is old.”
The
“brothers” are Pluto’s moons -- Charon, Styx, Nix, Kerberos, and Hydra. No, it’s
not a Greek law firm or a Variety headline from eighty years ago today. Rather, the ferryman of the dead, the river of the
dead, the goddess of darkness and light (and mother of Charon), the dog that
guards Pluto’s underworld and the nine-headed serpent, respectively. In the
final lines, Stalling reminds us that everything is older than the stories we
tell about it.
2 comments:
I don't think the "brothers" can be Pluto's moons as Pluto would be their moon were it true that they were bigger than Pluto. "Brothers"must refer to the other planets in the solar system. And Pluto's moons are smaller than Pluto in fact.
Those moons do have lovely names, though. The remoteness of Pluto combines wonderfully with names associated with Hades, and Dante too.
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