First Light
Original archive entry. The text, images and links below are kept as they were written.
Poem: At the mountain's top, I reach up,...
praise poem of the Southern African Large Telescope
"At the mountain's top, I reach up,
I fill my haversack with stars."
- Tatamkhulu Afrika: Nightrider
when the sun sets
we stand in the falling light
stretch out our arms,
catch the falling drops.
Stobie & Marang cup our CCD,
save all falling photons,
deepening into a pool of light
whose surface reflects:
stretch marks from the birth of time
hints of gravity's lenses
the pulse of stars
& mating dance of binary suns;
galaxies digitalized, a heaven
captured in butterfly nets of circuitry
red on the readout, disked for storage:
mysteries, solved & sensuous.
--Keith Gottschalk