Now comes the maddest thought of all, that we 
Cannot possibly know the universe 
From our tiny perch within it, had we 
Access to every viewpoint from the first. 
Says who? Says JB Manchak, eminent 
Professor of Logic, UC Irvine. 
What this philosopher of science meant 
Was that only so much can be divined 
From inside the light cones in which we’re trapped. 
We can’t tell this place from any other. 
No matter how much universe we’ve mapped 
We don’t know if Mother Earth’s our mother. 
This must confound both the wise and pious 
If indeed there should be any nigh us. 

1. From the prologue to A Matter of Life and Death, a 1946 British film written, produced, and directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger; the film was originally released in the US under the title Stairway to Heaven, a reference to the film’s iconic special effect nicknamed “Ethel”: a huge escalator linking Earth to the afterlife (source: Wikipedia).

2. Title of an article by JB Manchak, Professor of Logic and Philosophy of Science at UC Irvine, in IAI News (25 January 2025):
https://iai.tv/articles/the-universe-is-unknowable-from-within-it-auid-3057

Links were retrieved on 12 March 2025.

Kurt Luchs

won a 2022 Pushcart Prize, a 2021 James Tate Poetry Prize, the 2021 Eyelands Book Award for Short Stories, and the 2019 Atlanta Review International Poetry Contest. He is a Contributing Editor of Exacting Clam. His humor collection, It’s Funny Until Someone Loses an Eye (Then It’s Really Funny) (2017), and his poetry collection, Falling in the Direction of Up (2021), are published by Sagging Meniscus Press, along with his newest poetry collection, Death Row Row Row Your Boat (2024). He lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

Author’s website: https://kurtluchs.com/

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ The President of Nothing, flash fiction by Kurt Luchs in MacQueen’s Quinterly (Issue 21, January 2024)

⚡ Homunculus, poem by Luchs in MacQ (Issue 12, March 2022)

⚡ Lives of the Gods, prose poem by Luchs in MacQ (Issue 7, March 2021)