When Pluto was demoted to a dwarf planet
I was bummed
the list I’d learned at school
Mercury-Venus-Earth-Mars-Jupiter-Saturn-Uranus-Neptune-Pluto
no longer applied and Pluto had now become
the trans-Neptunian celestial body 134340
nothing but a big rock in the Kuiper Belt
the International Astronomical Union had made the call
and that was that
same thing happened to Ceres
a planet for fifty years
then one day plain old asteroid 1 Ceres
when Pluto was demoted
I can only imagine
how bummed Venetia Phair must have been
she who at twelve had suggested
the name Pluto to her grandfather
after reading in the paper
about the discovery of a new planet
Venetia died at almost ninety
a few months after her planet
became a dwarf
maybe that was why she died
disappointment
people die for weird reasons
like Chrysippus of Soli who died laughing
at the sight of a donkey eating his figs
or Kurt Gödel who starved to death
after refusing food others had cooked
or the umpire Dick Wertheim
during a tennis match
he took such a thwack to the testicles
he fell from his chair and split open his head
or the cameraman Ivan Lester McGuire
out filming skydivers
as they leaped into the unknown
he leapt too having forgotten
he hadn’t put on a parachute
Massimo Schuster (trans. Will Schutt)
