Caldecott - The Breathless Pause

Copyright 2007, Moyra Caldecott

Moyra Caldecott has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, to be identified as the Author of this work.

First published by Bladud Books in 2007.

This edition first published in 2007 by Mushroom eBooks, an imprint of Mushroom Publishing, Bath, BA1 4EB, United Kingdom
www.mushroom-ebooks.com

All rights reserved. This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It must not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy. If you are reading this book but did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of the author. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher.

ISBN 978-1-84319-335-7

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Shivering on a very small earth,
the night sky
formidable
with stars,
we pull the comforting blanket
of our love
over us,
and,
curled together,
dare Darkness grab us
and Time scatter us.

Sleeping
with the silver disk
of the full moon
on my forehead...
light shining
through the thick bone.
Watch how it glints
on mind-mirrors,
Scatters shadows,
and seeks at last,
the tiny seed-thought
that waits for birth.

Seeing that hair-line
of flexed silver
in the frail green sky
of evening,
I exult.

God watches man.
Man pulls earth shawl
around him
webbing himself with shadow.

The first men
witnessing
this bronze ball
rolling across the sky
must have feared
the vengeance of the gods.
But we,
in an Age of Science,
alone on this hill,
know better.
The stars are myriad,
but still the dark between them
unsettles us.
We who are dying
hope that Science
has left some secrets unresolved,
and, against all odds,
our death will be
among trumpets and cheering angels,
even our sins of omission
forgiven
by a smiling God.

The Hubble telescope
has changed my perception
of the universe.
When I look out
on a dark night
my mind sees
more than my eye...

A fist of cloud
limited to earth
hid
the giant traveller
from another galaxy.
And I
crouched
in my bed
surrounded
by small things
saw nothing of the splendour
of its journey
nor heard
its distant
thundering.

It was a shock
to realise
a black hole
was at the centre
of MY galaxy...
A spiralling wheel of light
being drawn into
a dense mystery
from which nothing can escape.
A black dot
as heavy as the earth,
a full stop
marking the end
of everything I know.

A white dwarf
and a neutron star
circle each other
every eleven minutes,
28,000 light years from earth.
Eleven minutes
while I talk to Rachel
on the phone.

I read in the Scientific American
that scientists had discovered
the sun rang like a bell,
constantly heaving with nuclear reactions,
and remembered the celestial music of the spheres
Medieval poets wrote about.
One evening of starlight
a friend played me a tape
of the sounds recorded
by one of the Voyager space probes
as it travelled the Universe...
Strange hummings and harmonies,
eerie and beguiling...
Today I heard
that the Kalahari San People
were asked by Laurens van der Post
what made them make music.
Have you not heard the stars sing?
They replied, puzzled.

Whether there is,
or is not,
a Multiverse
of which our vast Universe
is only a small part...
Whether a billion
mysterious singularities
exploded all on one day
or on others, at random...
Whether they are still exploding
as I drink my tea...
These questions
make my heart beat faster.
Beyond my front door
I see
a boundless
and magnificent
Infinity.

I miss the stars
of Southern Africa
more than the land itself.
the Milky Way
a thousand times more bright
to my childs eye,
than this I see in old age
in the Northern Hemisphere.
Not dwarfed then, I,
but a giant
turning a great wheel of stars
around my head.
Now I have shrunk
and only a few stars
prick the darkness
of the sky.

In 1054 a Chinese astronomer
observed a star exploding in the sky.
Today we have photographed
the filaments of gas and dust
that day the star thrust out
at thousands of kilometres per second.
But whether the floating debris,
the nebulous mist,
the pulsing neutron star
at its centre,
are still there,
we do not know.
The camera is not as subtle
as the mind
which can encompass
a multi-dimensional picture
of the explosion,
before and after
and to come...
The whence
and wherefore
and the why...

There are a thousand galaxies
in the constellation of Virgo
covering a region of at least
10 million light years across.
Billions more in the universe as a whole.
Giant vortices
and spirals of burning stars
driven by unimaginable forces...
Carried away by the expansion of space
through many dimensions...
And us
with them.

In its death throes
an exploding star
pulses out energy,
gas and dust.
A red tide
engulfs
nearby stars and planets...
Travels outwards
swallowing
dark matter
and galaxies...
Rolling
inexorably
towards the Earth.
I shut my door
To keep it out.

Eternity
cannot be measured
by the rotation
of stars.
It is measureless...
A point
where everything
is simultaneous
and has no beginning
and no end.

Astronomers calculate
the presence
of a celestial body
by noting
its influence
on those around it.
Why do we want
more proof than this
for the existence
of the divine?

If the two parts
of a split sub-atomic particle
can communicate
across great distances,
and human twins
can feel each others pain,
it is quite clear
that we know very little
about how the real world works.