To Urania
Astronomer who rules the tides and skies,
the stars and planets: when we lift our eyes
what strikes us is the vastness of your space.
Down here below in our familiar place,
we lead our lives, we scuttle through our days
barely aware of you. At night we raise
our gaze to your domain. It’s then we praise
your discipline, your rigor, and your logic,
as you conduct the heavenly spheres, majesti-
cally wielding gravity’s black wand.
Oh guide us through the star-fields and beyond,
far past the ash-heaps of mortality
and toward the outskirts of infinity.
Lead us along the spheres’ bewildering path
through unguessed wilderness. I catch my breath
at darkness specked with tiny dints of light
pricked in the paper as I sit and write.
Urania, queen of heaven’s harmony,
scan this offering with a cold eye.
Oh mistress of deliberate revision,
the highest laws demand the most precision.
