The Old Astronomer
D
Daniel Brick
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I wonder about the old astronomer.
Does he recall the heady days of
his youth following his unveiling
of one of the Universe's secrets?
A new star system. A cluster of
Earth-like planets. The dispersal
of an occluding gas cloud. Does he
page through a new astronomy textbook
to see how his discovery factors
into the total edifice of science?
Or does the thing discovered occupy
the whole stage in the textbook?
He might be nodding in assent
at this very moment. Yes, that's
as it should be. We transient
observers are not the issue. It is
this superabundant vast panoply of
matter and energy that takes our
breath away and then restores it
as new things become familiar things.
The astronomer's still nimble eyes
widen as he contemplates yet again
a cosmic drama that both dwarfs
and inflates us. For a long time,
he smiles a 21st century smile:
Oh, the irony of that smile,
sustained by our prideful knowledge
of things. In another two hundred
years, that same smile will crease
the features of one of his descendants,
as yet more darkness is suffused in light.
We will ever stand on shifting ground,
he concludes. Never fully certain of our
balance, we live and thrive on the unsteady
ground of perpetual discovery. Were it not
for my vanity, I'd be constantly dizzy,
leaning left, then right, then left...
Enough of these thoughts! Tonight Ruth and I
will listen side by side to THE MAGIC FLUTE,
and we will feel the bedrock of a thirty-year
marriage... And thus the mind that conceives
quasars and black holes and multiverses grows
calm, its quest for knowledge stilled.
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