Old Lights

too-i hoshi no furui hikari

mou nai mono ga ima mo todoku

Nothing up there is current.

Every point of it is a report filed a very long time ago

by something that may have stopped existing before anyone here was born.

You are not looking at the sky. You are reading the post.

The post is beautiful. The post is late.

and the sender is under no obligation to still be there.

Old light. (too-i hoshi no furui hikari)

Arriving anyway. (mou nai mono ga ima mo todoku)

Sent from something that may be gone

to somebody who was not born when it left.

Old light. (old light)

It kept coming the whole way.

That is the only fact that matters about it.

There is a version of this that's meant to make you feel small

though I have yet to manage taking it that way.

Something enormous went to the trouble of crossing all of that

so a person on a wet street could glance up for four seconds.

Not aimed at me. Not about me.

It landed on me anyway, and I was there for it.

Old light. (old light)

Still travelling. (still travelling)

Everything that ever shone

is still on its way to somebody.

Old light. (old light)

Whatever you put out

outlives the thing that put it out.

Old light. (old light)

So put something out. (put something out)

It will arrive somewhere you'll never see

long after you've stopped being anywhere.

Old light. (too-i hoshi no furui hikari)

mou nai mono ga ima mo todoku

No comfort in that. It's simply true.

I would rather send than not send.