Very Large Array - By Miriam Sagan

There was a library before the world began:
In Babylon, astrologers read the sky
Undissolvable cuneiform, or
Papyrus scroll
Buried in a jar
Sand sifting over the lost gospel.

Long line of radio telescopes
Along the Y-shaped track,
Pointing skyward
Heaven’s expanse unblemished
Azure dome’s
Azimuth.

Visible light
The frequency of dreams
The car radio
Andromeda galaxy
     it was hard to get the scale right

Sky seen by the radio telescope
Does not look like the sky
You see from here
Or the underworld
Where the sky is a mirror of this one

The camera gives the illusion
Of image
That what you are seeing
Is what you actually
Are seeing

     parabolic
     shadow

     staircase in the sky
     I climbed

Monoliths on the Plain of Salisbury
Like Easter Island
Heads all pointed
Leeward into the Trades.
Very Large Array
On the Plains of San Augustin
White radio telescopes
Pointed into the southern
Quadrant of
The universe
Listening to what.

Listening
Like a saint.

     anthill
     orange-winged grasshoppers
     waves
     come pouring in
     wind in the dry grass
     at the end of October

As if time were a book you could read in
Could touch like braille

She said: sometimes
The best picture
Is behind you

     the way sunglasses make things more beautiful

An Einstein Ring
How gravity bends
     starlight
Circular image
     reflection
Of distant galaxy

     white thistle
     gone to seed
     the ants might bring up
     one turquoise bead

Betelgeuse in Orion
Quasar powered
By black hole

At the speed of light
You could come back and simply stand up
Walk up the garden path
Suddenly irritated or surprised
By what had changed in your absence

     black hole
     in the center of
     the narrative

Wherever you stand out here
Is the center of a circle