Star Stuff — A Tribute to Carl Sagan
by Adisha Kariyawasam
28/03/2026
We stand on the shores of the cosmic ocean,
gazing into depths without end,
Feeling both the hush of our smallness
and the wonder of being here at all.
We arrive in the final seconds of a cosmic year,
yet carry within us the memory of stars,
ancient fires that shaped our being
long before our first breath found its voice.
Across the velvet dark,
the galaxies turn in silent grace,
spirals of light unfolding endlessly
beyond the reach of our imagining.
In the gentle shimmer of the Pleiades,
and the distant glow of the Andromeda Galaxy,
we glimpse our story written in light,
a language older than time itself.
Yet here, upon this fragile world,
another miracle quietly unfolds
not in the blaze of distant suns,
but in the hidden script of life itself.
Within each cell, a living archive,
a library more vast than stone or scroll,
echoing the lost halls of the Library of Alexandria,
yet written in strands too small to see.
A code of four simple letters,
woven into infinite possibility,
biological poetry written over billions of years,
guiding the growth of leaf and limb,
of thought, of memory, of love.
We are the universe learning to read its own code,
line by line, life by life,
a quiet awakening written in living form.
And we remember those who dared to ask,
each mind a lantern of knowledge passed through time
Hypatia,
Galileo Galilei,
Johannes Kepler,
Isaac Newton,
Marie Curie,
Charles Darwin,
Edwin Hubble,
and Rosalind Franklin, to name but a few,
each one illuminating the path we now walk.
Our Sun, a modest star among billions,
anchors this small and fragile home,
a pale blue whisper of life
where every story ever told
rests within a single point of light.
And still we ask, with hopeful hearts,
if somewhere beyond these silent seas
other worlds awaken to their dawn,
other minds look up and wonder too.
The Voyager craft drift onwards,
bearing a message cast into eternity,
a golden record of sound and soul,
not knowing who, if anyone, may listen.
Not as conquerors, nor as masters,
but as seekers of connection,
reaching across the cosmic ocean
with quiet humility and awe.
For what are we, if not stardust
gathered briefly into thought and form,
aware of our fleeting presence
in a universe both vast and kind?
And yet within this fragile moment,
we hold something extraordinary
the power to care, to create, to love,
to choose compassion over division,
for on this pale blue dot,
no one is coming to save us but ourselves.
From every corner of this Earth,
in every language, every dream,
we are one small family of light,
sharing this journey through the dark.
So let us stand upon that shore
with reverence, not fear,
for we are not apart from the cosmos.
We are its voice,
its consciousness,
its quiet awakening.
We are but a mote of dust, yes,
yet a mote that knows how to shine,
In a universe, divine.
