The Starlight Night

Look at the stars! look, look up at the skies!
O look at all the fire-folk sitting in the air!
The bright boroughs, the circle-citadels there!
Down in dim woods the diamond delves! the elves’-eyes!
The grey lawns cold where gold, where quickgold lies!
Wind-beat whitebeam! airy abeles set on a flare!
Flake-doves sent floating forth at a farmyard scare!
Ah well! it is all a purchase, all is a prize.

Buy then! bid then! — What? — Prayer, patience, alms, vows.
Look, look: a May-mess, like on orchard boughs!
Look! March-bloom, like on mealed-with-yellow sallows!
These are indeed the barn; withindoors house
The shocks. This piece-bright paling shuts the spouse
Christ home, Christ and his mother and all his hallows.

--Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889), English Victorian poet and Jesuit priest

The Embankment

(The fantasia of a fallen gentleman on a cold, bitter night.)

Once, in finesse of fiddles found I ecstasy,
In the flash of gold heels on the hard pavement.
Now see I
That warmth’s the very stuff of poesy.
Oh, God, make small
The old star-eaten blanket of the sky,
That I may fold it round me and in comfort lie.

-- T. E. Hulme (1883-1917), English Imagist poet

In Praise of God the Creator of the Skies--Eccleciasticus 43:1-22

The pride of the higher realms is the clear vault of the sky,
as glorious to behold as the sight of the heavens.
The sun, when it appears, proclaims as it rises
what a marvelous instrument it is, the work of the Most High.
At noon it parches the land,
and who can withstand its burning heat?
A man tending a furnace works in burning heat,
but three times as hot is the sun scorching the mountains;
it breathes out fiery vapors,
and its bright rays blind the eyes.
Great is the Lord who made it;
at his orders it hurries on its course.

It is the moon that marks the changing seasons,
governing the times, their everlasting sign.
From the moon comes the sign for festal days,
a light that wanes when it completes its course.
The new moon, as its name suggests, renews itself;
how marvelous it is in this change,
a beacon to the hosts on high,
shining in the vault of the heavens!

The glory of the stars is the beauty of heaven,
a glittering array in the heights of the Lord.
On the orders of the Holy One they stand in their appointed places;
they never relax in their watches.
Look at the rainbow, and praise him who made it;
it is exceedingly beautiful in its brightness.
It encircles the sky with its glorious arc;
the hands of the Most High have stretched it out.

By his command he sends the driving snow
and speeds the lightnings of his judgment.
Therefore the storehouses are opened,
and the clouds fly out like birds.
In his majesty he gives the clouds their strength,
and the hailstones are broken in pieces.
The voice of his thunder rebukes the earth;
when he appears, the mountains shake.
At his will the south wind blows;
so do the storm from the north and the whirlwind.
He scatters the snow like birds flying down,
and its descent is like locusts alighting.
The eye is dazzled by the beauty of its whiteness,
and the mind is amazed as it falls.
He pours frost over the earth like salt,
and icicles form like pointed thorns.
The cold north wind blows,
and ice freezes on the water;
it settles on every pool of water,
and the water puts it on like a breastplate.
He consumes the mountains and burns up the wilderness,
and withers the tender grass like fire.
A mist quickly heals all things;
the falling dew gives refreshment from the heat.

-New Revised Standard Version

The Dimensions of the Milky Way

Behind the men’s dorm
at dusk on a late May evening,
Carver lowers the paper
and watches the light change.
He tries to see earth
across a distance
of twenty-five thousand light-years,
from the center of the Milky Way:
a grain of pollen, a spore
of galactic dust.
He looks around:
that shagbark, those swallows,
the fireflies, that blasted mosquito:
this beautiful world.
A hundred billion stars
in a roughly spherical flattened disc
with a radius of one hundred light-years.
Imagine that.
He catches a falling star.
Well, Lord, this infinitesimal speck
could fill the universe with praise.


--Marilyn Nelson (1946- ), African American poet and translator, Poet Laureate of Connecticut

O Star-flinging God

O Star-flinging God,
whose light dances across eternity,
       dazzle us into your presence
       this new year.
Open our hearts to the mystery of your love.

Awaken us to your presence,
       knit to the ordinary.
Reveal to us what is possible, but not yet present.
Heal us, that we might be healers.

Reconcile us to you and to ourselves,
       that our living might be reconciling.

Stop us often, we pray
       with news that is good
       with hope that holds
       with truth that transforms with a Word
              tailored to this trail we're on.

May the word of your grace guide our steps
       like the sun by day
       and the north star by night,
       as we travel into the gift of a new year. Amen.

— written by Glenn Mitchell, and posted on MINemergent’s Daily Communique.

My God, It's Full of Stars

          1. 

We like to think of it as parallel to what we know, 
Only bigger. One man against the authorities. 
Or one man against a city of zombies. One man 

Who is not, in fact, a man, sent to understand 
The caravan of men now chasing him like red ants 
Let loose down the pants of America. Man on the run.

Man with a ship to catch, a payload to drop, 
This message going out to all of space. . . . Though 
Maybe it’s more like life below the sea: silent, 

Buoyant, bizarrely benign. Relics 
Of an outmoded design. Some like to imagine 
A cosmic mother watching through a spray of stars, 

Mouthing yes, yes as we toddle toward the light, 
Biting her lip if we teeter at some ledge. Longing 
To sweep us to her breast, she hopes for the best 

While the father storms through adjacent rooms 
Ranting with the force of Kingdom Come, 
Not caring anymore what might snap us in its jaw. 

Sometimes, what I see is a library in a rural community. 
All the tall shelves in the big open room. And the pencils 
In a cup at Circulation, gnawed on by the entire population. 

The books have lived here all along, belonging 
For weeks at a time to one or another in the brief sequence 
Of family names, speaking (at night mostly) to a face,

A pair of eyes. The most remarkable lies. 


           2. 

Charlton Heston is waiting to be let in. He asked once politely. 
A second time with force from the diaphragm. The third time, 
He did it like Moses: arms raised high, face an apocryphal white. 

Shirt crisp, suit trim, he stoops a little coming in, 
Then grows tall. He scans the room. He stands until I gesture, 
Then he sits. Birds commence their evening chatter. Someone fires 

Charcoals out below. He’ll take a whiskey if I have it. Water if I don’t. 
I ask him to start from the beginning, but he goes only halfway back. 
That was the future once, he says. Before the world went upside down. 

Hero, survivor, God’s right hand man, I know he sees the blank
Surface of the moon where I see a language built from brick and bone.
He sits straight in his seat, takes a long, slow high-thespian breath,

Then lets it go. For all I know, I was the last true man on this earth. And: 
May I smoke? The voices outside soften. Planes jet past heading off or back.
Someone cries that she does not want to go to bed. Footsteps overhead.

A fountain in the neighbor’s yard babbles to itself, and the night air 
Lifts the sound indoors. It was another time, he says, picking up again. 
We were pioneers. Will you fight to stay alive here, riding the earth

Toward God-knows-where? I think of Atlantis buried under ice, gone
One day from sight, the shore from which it rose now glacial and stark.
Our eyes adjust to the dark. 


          3.

Perhaps the great error is believing we’re alone,

That the others have come and gone—a momentary blip—

When all along, space might be choc-full of traffic,

Bursting at the seams with energy we neither feel

Nor see, flush against us, living, dying, deciding,

Setting solid feet down on planets everywhere,

Bowing to the great stars that command, pitching stones 

At whatever are their moons. They live wondering 

If they are the only ones, knowing only the wish to know,

And the great black distance they—we—flicker in.


Maybe the dead know, their eyes widening at last, 

Seeing the high beams of a million galaxies flick on 

At twilight. Hearing the engines flare, the horns

Not letting up, the frenzy of being. I want to be

One notch below bedlam, like a radio without a dial. 

Wide open, so everything floods in at once.

And sealed tight, so nothing escapes. Not even time,

Which should curl in on itself and loop around like smoke.

So that I might be sitting now beside my father

As he raises a lit match to the bowl of his pipe

For the first time in the winter of 1959. 





          4.

In those last scenes of Kubrick’s 2001 
When Dave is whisked into the center of space, 
Which unfurls in an aurora of orgasmic light 
Before opening wide, like a jungle orchid 
For a love-struck bee, then goes liquid, 
Paint-in-water, and then gauze wafting out and off, 
Before, finally, the night tide, luminescent 
And vague, swirls in, and on and on. . . . 

In those last scenes, as he floats
Above Jupiter’s vast canyons and seas,
Over the lava strewn plains and mountains
Packed in ice, that whole time, he doesn’t blink. 
In his little ship, blind to what he rides, whisked 
Across the wide-screen of unparcelled time, 
Who knows what blazes through his mind? 
Is it still his life he moves through, or does 
That end at the end of what he can name?

On set, it’s shot after shot till Kubrick is happy, 
Then the costumes go back on their racks 
And the great gleaming set goes black.


          5.
When my father worked on the Hubble Telescope, he said 
They operated like surgeons: scrubbed and sheathed
In papery green, the room a clean cold, a bright white.

He’d read Larry Niven at home, and drink scotch on the rocks,
His eyes exhausted and pink. These were the Reagan years,
When we lived with our finger on The Button and struggled

To view our enemies as children. My father spent whole seasons
Bowing before the oracle-eye, hungry for what it would find.
His face lit-up whenever anyone asked, and his arms would rise

As if he were weightless, perfectly at ease in the never-ending
Night of space. On the ground, we tied postcards to balloons
For peace. Prince Charles married Lady Di. Rock Hudson died.

We learned new words for things. The decade changed.

The first few pictures came back blurred, and I felt ashamed
For all the cheerful engineers, my father and his tribe.
The second time, The optics jibed. We saw to the edge of all there is— 

So brutal and alive it seemed to comprehend us back.

--Tracy K. Smith (1972- ), US poet laureate 2017-2019, from Life on Mars, 2011

Orion

I love Orion, his fiery body, his ten stars,
his flaring points of reference, his shining dogs.

“It is winter,” he says.
“We must eat,” he says. Our gloomy

and passionate teacher.


                                              Miles below

in the cold woods, with the mouse and the owl, 

with the clearness of water sheeted and hidden,

with the reason for the wind forever a secret, 
he descends and sits with me, his voice 
like the snapping of bones.


                                                   Behind him

everything is so black and unclassical; behind him
I don’t know anything, not even

my own mind.


-- Mary Oliver (1935- ), American poet, from Dream Work, 1986

Arran of the many stags,

the sea strikes against its shoulder,

isle in which companies are fed,

ridge on which blue spears are reddened.

skittish deer are on her peaks,

delicious berries on her manes,

cool water in her rivers,

mast upon her dun oaks.

Greyhounds are in it and beagles,

blackberries and sloes of the dark blackthorn,

her dwellings close against the woods,

deer scattered about her oak-woods,

gleaning of purple upon her rocks,

faultless grass upon her slopes

over her fair shapely crags

noise of dappled fawns a-skipping.

Smooth is her level land,

fat are her swine,

bright are her fields,

her nuts upon the tops of her hazel-wood,

long galleys sailing past her.

Delightful it is when the fair season comes,

trout under the brinks of her rivers,

seagulls answer each other round her white cliff,

delightful at all times is Arran!

—ancient Gaelic, anonymous, from Celtic Nature Prayers Volume 1: Prayers from an Ancient Well, ed. by Kenneth McIntosh



Image: The Milky Way over Arran and the Holy Isle, from the Daily Record