Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend.
Inside a dog, it's too dark to read.
                                                      —Groucho Marx

The sky:
Stars, or the apparencies of stars

A silhouette, the occlusion
      of the brightness beyond;
The silhouette, the shadow cast
      by the agent of occlusion
            of light summed
                  to the curved plane of retina.

Of every object observed,
The observer lies in its shadow
Each star in the starry night
Casting upon its observer its shadow
Against the darkness
      or brightness
            behind and beyond
And so we walk each day
      however gray or bright
In the blinding shadow of the sun.

All we have ever seen
      and ever will see
Is Surface.
The burrowings in Being
      of camera,
            probe,
                  and drill
                        return us news
Only of surfaces
      from which, through the extrapolation afforded
            by Virtualization—
                  through the resolution, back to the apparencies
                        of Depth
                              and Distance,
                        of Cause
                              and Effect,
                        and the continuum of State
                              called Time—
From the summedness of arriving light to the surface of retinae
      and the summedness of arriving sound to the surface of tympani
            and the summedness of localized and general pressure on the surface of skin
                  do we perceive,
                        through deconstruction and reconstitution in our mind's eye,
                              the sound-field of a summer night
                              the handedness of molecules
                              the geologic layers of the earth
                              the lines of force of bow-shock-flattened magnetosphere
                                    while just beneath our own skin
                                          within a thigh
                                          the interior of jaw
                                          or tooth
                                          or tongue
                                                no less than the interior of mountain
Is Silence
      or relative silence,
Darkness
      or relative darkness
Unknowable,
For whatever and however subtle
      our means of excavation or microtome
            our diggings reveal only more Surface
While ever beneath Surface
Is Mystery.