Planetarium

(Thinking of Caroline Herschel, 1750-1848, astronomer,sister of William; and others)

A woman in the shape of a monstera monster in the shape of a womanthe skies are full of them

a woman “in the snowamong the Clocks and instrumentsor measuring the ground with poles”

in her 98 years to discover8 cometsshe whom the moon ruledlike uslevitating into the night skyriding the polished lenses

Galaxies of women, theredoing penance for impetuousnessribs chilled

in those spaces of the mindAn eye,“virile, precise and absolutely certain”from the mad webs of Uranisborgencountering the NOVA

every impulse of light explodingfrom the coreas life flies out of us

Tycho whispering at last”Let me not seem to have lived in vain”

What we see, we seeand seeing is changing

the light that shrivels a mountainand leaves a man alive

Heartbeat of the pulsarheart sweating through my body

The radio impulsepouring in from Taurus

I am bombarded yet     I stand

I have been standing all my life in thedirect path of a battery of signalsthe most accurately transmitted mostuntranslateable language in the universe

I am a galactic cloud so deep so invo-luted that a light wave could take 15years to travel through me 

And has taken I am an instrument in the shapeof a woman trying to translate pulsationsinto images for the relief of the bodyand the reconstruction of the mind.