So here I puzzle on the golden alphabet

and know it can be read

though not by me,

no, not by me,

nor any man of this barbaric age

and yet I feel

this symmetry is not the play of chance;

something beyond the stars was writing here

a book that molecules have set in place.

Why should they not?

For even we

bring out of darkness thoughts and rhythms

that ring the mind with music;  . . .

 

-from “Something Beyond the Stars” by Loren Eiseley, published in The Innocent Assassins (Charles Scribners Sons 1973)

Image: Golden Panorama