Red shift
Held by an image of our outer space:
Spots, dots, and whirls of white and red,
Time-tunnelling in silent grace,
Parsecs where only thought can tread.
Blue blazes of the younger fire,
Red smudges of the ancient mist,
Vast mergers of the flowing gyre
Down ages of the world persist.
These distant forms of space and truth
Work back upon the thoughts we frame;
Prayer puzzles through a shaping sieve:
Dead words or else a larger name.
Still, quietly ask the teeming sky:
Draws over there that which can love?
Lights there a dance which can convey?
Rests there a hold of things above?
Copyright Credit: Andrew Steane, "Red shift"
from Science and Humanity. Copyright © 2021 by Andrew Steane. Reprinted with the permission of Oxford University Press