Galileo's Gaze

When Galileo first looked at the moon through a telescope He saw circles like intersecting ripples. Who could know that crashing rocks had made them? By gazing at those circular outlines he discovered The light-facing side of each circle was edged with a dark line; Having learned to draw, Galileo knew the look of shading, His knowing artistic eye was able to judge: These circles had depth... they must be craters! At such times art and rationality go journeying together; A man's view of craters brought the moon's condition closer: Reason needs aesthetics to gain full awareness of the moon: That desolation exposed to outer space, never soothed by rain, That "Palace of Vast Coldness, " never able to incubate life, [1] And in our lives we brush shoulders With such bleakness countless times. Down the river of human seeing, on shoulders of past stargazers, People mused upon the barren companion that circles our world; Through contrast, we became aware of our planet's marvels: We treated that bleakness as something sacred in the cosmos; We hung it as a mirror, for lonely hearts to think of each other; Looking up, we could cherish our human realm all the more. When Galileo came along; we hailed him as master observer; He brought us a reminder of something we had already felt, Though it was wrapped in a special kind of human mystery. Aug.2014 [2] Notes: [1] 'Palace of Vast Coldness' was a phrase used by the Song-era poet Su Dongpo to describe the moon. [2] Written after seeing the collection of Galileo's books in the Rare Books Section of the University of Oklahoma Library in Norman, Oklahoma.