AQUILA I -- CONSTELLARIA

 

   We have sat tonight in distant conclave

   To name the unbounded reach

   That may still be grasped

   By journeying beyond mete and bound.
 
 

   We gather to see another mindform

   Venture into our cloister,

   And submit to eternity those who one day

   Will convene at the hub of time:
 
 

   Apus, heretofore the youngest and most glorious

   To the eye, our flower;

   Grus, sailor of the landlocked soul, keeper

   Of the heart and hearth;

   Phoenix, who will sustain the voyageur en route

   To new desmenes;

   Cygnus, stout and bitter defender of all

   Emergent seekers;

   Corvus, elder statesman of the dawn, eternal

   Justice reincarnate;

   Pegasus, harbinger of all that may, when brasses sound,

   Ever come of daring;

   Myself, spokesman cursed and blessed with raptor's

   Vision of the farthest dooms;

   And now Peregrinus, swiftest of harriers, who may by grace

   Outfly the curse of reason and despair:

   Ultimate survivor, she is hereby

   Decreed namesake of the constellation seen at zenith

   From Andromeda's first landfall.
 
 

   - David W. Mitchell
 

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