I think I understand why the sailors decided not to loose their north.

There is the guiding star that they could not see if they drifted south

and being lost at sea had no knowable outcome,

except that for some time, the edge would be eventually inminent

and the fall into the void of time and space

carried no poetic tone.

Looking up and give such meaning to glowing mostly already dead

traces of that which was

gave the certainty of a non lost future

the stillness of knowing that there is a way back home