FALLING FROM THE SKY

Magic is dying out, although the heights 

still pulse with its vast force. On August nights

you can't be sure what's falling from the sky:

a star? or something else that still belongs on high?

Is making wishes an old-fashioned blunder

if heaven only knows what we are under?

Above our modern heads the dark's still dark,

but can't some twinkle in it explain: ''I'm a spark,

I swear, a flash that a comet shook loose

from its tail, just a bit of cosmic rubble;

it's not me falling in tomorrow's news,

that's some other spark nearby, having engine trouble.''

-Wislawa Szymborska