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Sport 37: Winter 2009

Herschel at the Cape

page 39

Herschel at the Cape

He steals the Dutch stars.
He will write with a pen.
He will write with light.

* *

1833: two months at sea.

Ashore, he notes
the mackerel drift of cloud.
His telescope stands in an orchard.

* *

Double star and double star.
He fixes another nebula.

He rummages and sweeps.

Double star and double star.
He polishes the mirror.

* *

He cooks an egg in the sun
then moves on to mutton.

He studies tides, yet thinks time flies.
He loses the morning looking for a key.
He measures Alpha Centauri.

page 40

* *

Now he robs the wilds of lovely flowers.
He draws an outline and his wife paints in.

He shoots a few brown birds—
yellow beneath their tails—

then watches his children gather cones,
sketching until the Cape light fails.

Often he completes the background
but leaves the foreground empty . . .

Double star and double star—
a blank space, then a cluster.

* *

He studies sun-spots.
The milk-boy steals the Beef.

He imitates the calls of birds.
He mistakes a cluster for a comet.

He makes another sweep.

* *

Wood pigeons—Paparrrrra paparrrr-a
Day and night
Blasop. Ki-ki-krrrrrrrr...

page 41

Buckmackeiri
A. on one side of road whew—whew—whew
B. —on opposite Gong—gong
A ——— Whew—whew
B ——— Gong Gong

and so on ad infinitum

* *

And snakes attack, and dogs,
and purgatorial rats, and fleas.
There are coughs and colds
and a face-ache called the Sinkings.

And glorious nights, pure and clear
double star and double star
and sometimes such ill-adapted air
that the stars swell out and waver.

* *

Also he studies weather.
His study is unroofed by wind.
Double star and double star.
He dismisses a carpenter.
He repairs a barometer.

* *

page 42

He will propose the contact lens
and study colour blindness.

He will talk of snap-shot and of negative.
He will translate the Iliad.

He will be Master of the Mint.
He will invent the blueprint.

But at present he arranges stars.

* *

He also evaporates the juice of figs.
He is quick in motion and in speech.
He draws a sudden gale.
He writes with the Anglo-Saxon thorn.
He digs in the earth. He does reductions.
He loves his wife and children.
He makes a zone and sweeps the sky.
And people with wings are walking on the moon!
(A hoax.) He is pestered in several languages.
He is modest, he is shy.
Halley can sometimes make him sigh . . .
it steals his sweeps, and makes him slow . . .
He uses the camera lucida.
He translates Michelangelo.

* *

Four years at the Cape . . .
we hear his happiness from afar.

Of Saturn's sixth, uncertain moon,
he writes to his aunt with an italic shout:

'So this is at last a thing made out.'

page 43

* *

Double star and double star.
Winter and summer.

* *

Double star and double star.
He polishes the mirror.