Lawn Wake IX

(Spoken excerpt from the 1994 book "Pale Blue Dot" by Carl Sagan) 

  ...Every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam 

  The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena 

  Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot 

  Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds 

  Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light 

  Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark