the manifolds of space

Given my blip-entry, back on 23rd March last year, I thought it just had to be another poem by Rebecca Elson for today ...

... this one is taken from Elson's wide-ranging poetry and essay collection, entitled 'A Responsibility to Awe', which was published posthumously in 2001:


Constellations

Imagine they were not minor gods
Mounted in eternal in memoriam
Or even animals, however savage,
Pinned like specimens upon the sky.

Imagine they were lambada dancers
Practising their slow seductions
On the manifolds of space.

Then in the name of science
We might ride their studded thighs
To the edge of our hypotheses,
Discover there the real constants
Of the universe:

The quick pulse,
The long look,
The one natural law.

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Rebecca Elson (1960 - 1999)

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