XIV. Sky
THE STARS FROM THE TRAM
If you went on the tram to Bolton at night,
you'd see the stars come along with you. People
by the side of the road flickering in the light
when all our windows went over them rushed past
and were gone in a second. A church steeple
trying to hold back the stars went by as fast
as the people. The street lamps like luminous
nets or like spiders' webs with dew on, all slid
away backwards — they couldn't keep up with us.
Big trees came spinning along, finally hid
them from view. But the stars — seemed that they were meant
to stay, keeping their sharp eyes on where we went.
BLUE SKY
Was a kind of blue sky, about half past three,
probably late August when autumn was just
hinting mistiness, harvest heat, that for me,
staring up hard, made me think some exciting
things were happening somewhere, as if you must,
say, up in Rivington park, have a sighting
of some wonderful landscape in a foreign
land — no, not foreign because it wouldn't be
on this world, yet it was, as a sort of twin,
only, was so much better, as if to see
that fine blue was enough to change everything
and yet leave it the same. Made you want to sing.
SUNLIGHT
I would wonder what it was about sunlight
made it so marvellous. The astronomy
books, they showed the sun spotty, a burning bright
pineapple-slice, raging with 'prominences'
like the tongues of mad dragons, an enemy
sworn against any lovely brilliances
that go flashing on water, against softer,
sadder, cool colourings under clouds, through trees,
over moorlands where cloud-shadows discover
shapes like a blind man, against sifting seas
that are panhandling jewels, against the blue sky
over Horwich that would open to space on high.
THE MOON
Through the telescope Daddy bought me, the Moon,
crisp as a biscuit, showed its craters and plains
to my single eye like a frozen balloon —
someone had shot at it with pebbles and pellets.
There was one of the craters had long white lanes
stretching in rays out from it. And parapets,
wriggling Maginot Lines, circled the dark seas
like on the Wedgwood pottery Auntie had.
The half-moon showed the craters best, sort of frieze
sketched by the shadows, looking like Stalingrad
ruins, huge mountains really, a dawn light strong
and sharp, starting a morning half a month long.
CLOUDS
There were some clouds like scenery, the ones
nearest you opened to show others and they
opened too, with the blue sky beyond. Like swans
drifting with rivers, they were shifted without
any movement, their edges parting with stray,
silent revealings of others further out
that were closing as slowly. You'd see each cloud
still and unchanging, but, when you looked again,
it had lost the girl's face. Seemed you weren't allowed,
try as you might, to see how they changed. In vain
you would watch, but these players, noble and grand,
wouldn't let you detect their slow sleight-of-hand.
SKY TIME
In the blue sky the lowest clouds went quickest,
sailing-ships riding the wind, with white sails tight
as balloons. You could think they were hours, brightest,
showing their fringes the clearest, each shred so
still beside the next shred, all sailing. The flight
high above those was stratus, each an ice-floe,
broad, and slow on deliberate currents; these
floes were the months, going by at a grander,
wider pace. But the highest of all, at ease,
frozen and frail, like thinnest ice, the fainter
cirrus-continents, years resting, plain to view,
but by six, they had vanished in the blue.
CIRRUS CLOUDS
Saw the cirrus like rippled sand or tight
curled hair — and 'cirrus' meant ringlet we learned in
our geography lesson. You'd see these white
wafers and discs that were miles long, very high,
sometimes combed on the blue like silk or satin,
spread out like water-colour wash, so the sky
and the cloud had no edge. On the horizon
cirrus could help you see that the earth was
curved. Once up on the Pike, the sunset golden,
they'd set an arc so slight, so straight because
of the size of the world, they could just betray
a dip down to north and to south, far away.
CIRRUS MOVING
There was cirrus like open wings of giant
angels, all shifting as one. If you gazed at
where the top of a tree met them, they didn't
move but the tree did, as if we were on an
ocean liner, the world leaving port, so that
suddenly you got to know, and you began
wondering where we were going, all of us now
sailing together into the far future,
letting some of us off one by one. The bow
there in the east somewhere, the stern in the brighter
west, but out of our sight on the sea. One dark
night, at some small harbour, you'd disembark.
GLOWING INSIDE
Liked the way that both clouds and snow, when sunlight
shone bright, would glow inside, not like a Chinese
lantern, only around the edge, but bright
right through, so deep inside, inside, just like when
you feel all your hands are warm or they freeze
through with the cold, when every part is joined then
with the others in one thrilling, insistent
stereo-feeling, but each bit of the cloud
or the snowdrift is lit with a different
tint of the white or the palest gray, or proud
in the sunrise with tinges of amethyst,
opal, topaz and rose, in fathomless mist.
THE NAKED WOMEN IN THE CLOUDS
You could see naked women in the clouds. Not
when all the sun had gone on a dreary day,
but when blue sky showed through the spaces between, and hot
sunlight was pouring through, then there'd be lovely
breasts and bottoms, long smooth thighs. Up there they lay,
sunlit and soft. In a while they'd go fuzzy,
but the others would show, never denying
what you wanted to see. Arms would embrace
you and legs open wide. No flying
off without others flying to take their place.
It was odd standing talking to Father Mike
seeing them beckon over Rivington Pike.
WHICH CONSTELLATION?
It has so many names, like 'Ursa Major' —
that's 'The Great Bear'. The real bear was the oblong
at the end and each star left was a hunter.
But they called it 'The Plough' as well. Could see why
with the handle and blade, and striding along
there behind was the ploughman. Wasn't a lie
to say Plough' — couldn't be. Some said 'Charles's Wain'
(Who was Charles?) — it was going the other way
from the Plough and the hunters. And then again,
the Americans said 'Big Dipper'. I'd play
fixing stars where I liked. With the Pole Star too,
'Eiffel Tower' or 'Harp' would be just as true.
MESSAGE FROM OUTER SPACE
Stars for 'Nightwatchers'. He meant Observer Corps,
Air Raid Wardens. I didn't know. Only knew
I was watching. What for? Was nice to explore
with my telescope. Freezing hands kept it still,
pointing upward and stretched out to get a view
of the Milky Way. Watching was such a thrill.
Perhaps morse code would come; perhaps one bright star
among thousands would flash, and not just twinkle,
and the wonderful mystery of what lay far
off among all that sparkling space would travel
down to me and I'd tell them all what I'd read.
There would be no more wars — They'd do what I said.
CELESTIAL ALIGNMENTS (ANTEDATING PAUL CHURCHLAND)
I would lean my head sideways until my eyes
matched their horizon to the plane of the great
solar system, The Earth sloped in that slantwise
look, and the Moon and Saturn and Jupiter
were all whirling together, a level plate
skimming through stars. I was the sole arbiter
of the sky, rearranging what one could see.
I was the driver. I'd go for bigger game:
in a frost, with the Milky Way above me
spanning the heavens, I would do just the same,
match my eyes to its star-clouds, shoal upon shoal.
The whole galaxy moved to my control.
THE NORTHERN LIGHTS
Saw the sky seem to twitch like a horse's hide,
dark crimson glows in the night, a soft purple
that was there and then wasn't. Soon as you'd eyed
it, saw it pulled off from the sky as smartly
as a conjuror's cloth. Then it would hurtle
silent and swift over miles of height, starry
spaces jumped and rebounded, an elastic
speeded-up snooker of light. Then an instant
saw it hang in huge stage curtains, fantastic
looped up in tassels, as if God was present
and the Last Trump was sounding. It was your brain
where the thoughts rushed about, again and again.
'SPACE — THE FINAL FRONTIER'
Climbing mountains was fine, but the highest place,
highest in thrills, too, was the sky. Up on Mars
were canals and a race of men for whom space
challenged their courage forever. There would be
dangers — villains and monsters beyond the stars —
but with the latest machines mankind would see
how to conquer their evil. That march in
Things to Come showed just how splendid the future
was. The past was forgettable. Had to win,
rising to freedom, to discover the treasure
that our enterprise promised. Still would enthuse
when the bombs fell on London inside the V2's.
STARS IN THE BLACK-OUT
In the black-out the stars were still there. Frosty
nights in the winter opened out the cosmos
to those raised on adventure myths. Rocketry
darted in notebooks to real planets burning
afar over the roof. Within grandiose
towers were bunks, food and oxygen: yearning
for that swoop around Venus, as she shone, cold
pin of magnesium dazzle, pure above
the Works chimney, had made us designers, bold
venturers needing protection where our love
mined the wonder of star clouds big and little,
turning natural gems to artificial.
A NIGHTWATCHER
I'd go out with my telescope in winter
armed with Astronomy for Nightwatchers and
search for nebulæ, planets, try to splinter
single stars double. Grand Orion, his sword
all a-sparkle, stood striding above the land,
Betelgeuse piercing like a red eye. A hoard
of bright diamonds the Pleiades. A cocoon
tiny and egg-shaped, the vast Andromeda
galaxy, farthest thing we can see. At noon
of the night, before ancient Sumeria
had existed, a light shone faintly down which
reached a lawn in Vale Avenue in Horwich.
LIGHT FROM THE PAST
When I read about light-years, I would look at
one star and think, 'That's what it was on the day
I was born,' and another next to it, that
looked just the same, belonged to another time,
say, the wars of Napoleon, and away
far in Andromeda the eyes would there climb
back to when there were no men here. Saw the whole sky
quietly twinkling but none of it present.
All of it past, and countless pasts. They'd flown by,
some of the stars, some not even existent.
But the same was as true of a view on Earth:
for the further the light, the earlier its birth.
ON A LINE OF ALFRED NOYES'*
When you read of the Moon it 'was a ghostly
galleon tossed upon cloudy seas', you knew
that you had to be scared. But the Moon mostly
stayed fairly nice 'cause it made the night brighter.
You could see it as anything, never true
to what it really was. Saw it whiter
than a skull, but with eyes just the same; or, when
crescent-shaped, God's fingernail showing through
where He held up the stars; with the old moon, then
it would remind me, with that misty grey-blue,
of an eye with cataract. Seeing it change,
didn't need someone telling me it was strange.
*First verse of 'The Highwayman'
THE ETERNAL STARS
When I read that a Chinese astronomer
over a thousand years ago showed the star
that's in Bootes, Arcturus, at some fewer
points of degree to the west, I realised
that the stars are not fixed. It has moved as far
as the diameter of the Moon, disguised
by its stillness as all the stars. So things change
there where eternity was supposed to be.
It's only because they're out of our range
we are so tempted to fix them. Can agree
if we like, as we must, on a star or a god,
but we shouldn't be shocked when there's something odd.