That night he lay
On the floor in one of the roofless chambers of the Old Observatory,
Looking up at the night sky.
Here he conjured up a diagram of the planets,
Visited by Earth’s space ships,
To study the positions
And orbits of
Venus
Earth
Mars
Jupiter
Saturn
Uranus
And Neptune.
Then he took the Sound Pencil
and pointed it upward.
It was the first time that anyone on Earth,
Including himself,
Had ever heard the sounds of the universe.
He pointed the Sound Pencil
At the waning crescent moon,
And its crater Gassendi.
http://voltaire.csun.edu/ann/moon4.html
… At the dust storms circulating,
Month upon month,
around the planet Mars.
… At the Comet Ikeya-Zhang,
As it returned to our solar system
After some 340 years.
http://www.spaceweather.com/comets/IkeyaZhang/ikeya_042302/numazawa_2002c1_041802.jpg
… At the Cone Galaxy,
In the constellation of Monoceros,
Some 2,500 light years away,
Listening to the sounds of its vast pillar of gas and dust.
… At the Orion Arm,
Where our sun, surrounded by its planets,
Including Earth, resides
Some 26,000 light years away from the center of the Milky Way,
A spiral galaxy of at least two hundred billion stars.
http://www.anzwers.org/free/universe/5000lys.html
… And at the Sextans and Ursa Miner Dwarfs and
Megellanic Clouds
That surround the Milky Way.
http://www.anzwers.org/free/universe/sattelit.html
He pointed the Sound Pencil
At the Tadpole Galaxy,
Spinning like a giant pinwheel firework
As it whirls through space,
With its trail of stars and gases
Stretching out more than 280,000 light years.
… At a galaxy
Whose arms of interstellar gas and dust clouds
Hold young luminous hot suns.
… And at another
With its explosion of new stars.
… At a doomed star
Thinking of its future death.
Just before dawn,
He pointed the Sound Pencil
at the World of the Star Dwellers,
But no sound came back.
He heard only his own breathing.
As dawn broke,
Exhausted from the sounds of the universe,
He sat
Imagining the sound of the Star Dweller’s silent World.
by Moira Roth
Written 4/06–5/02/02
