The Flammarion Engraving

 

The Milky Way is stone and silent fire,

Flying ice and dust, and expanding gas,

But what we find within the heliosphere

Suggests a whilom laboratory

Where the essential elements were cast

And the residues made preparatory

For the distillation that's planet Earth:

Europa's water, Io's sulfur,

Gases from Saturn and Jupiter,

Engineered for the terrestrial birth.

The traveler sees, beyond a starry veil,

Cosmic clockwork, eternal music.

Kneeling, he lifts a hand as if to hail

His Maker, the tinkering mechanic.

Zone of Avoidance*, Sonnet #341

That is where the seventh dimension sleeps,
Tucked like a few mice in a cardboard tube.
The density of the galaxy seeps
What's beyond its mass, but no amplitude
Of star or nova can penetrate there
To reach my retina. Oh, but we care!
It's maddening, this secret extension
Of nothing we know and will never guess,
Like a rule the gods forgot to mention
That demands of us a No and a Yes.
A pretty phrase, the zone of avoidance,
As if we've chosen not to be bothered,
Decided that child will not be fathered,
When we'd rather ignore our ignorance.

*Note: The "zone of avoidance" is the area
of the sky that is obscured by the densest
portions of the Milky Way.