The whole kerfuffle woke the stars

For World Space Week last October I wrote “On the declaration of the first day of the Year of Our Light.” There are some wonderful lines in this poem, such as “The swirling spheres in proclamation”, “Light of more silver bright” and the bit quoted for the headline, “The whole kerfuffle woke the stars.” Sometimes

Do engineers dream?

Do engineers dream of eiderdown chairs and perhaps a world without gravity? Do they poke with soft pencils at yesterday’s dreams and the monstrous dark in the bedsit? Do they skilfully rush to the day’s blasting rays at the stretch of a morning which never delays? — I know a few engineers and they are

An Artist Works

Evening, 31 August 1822 Above, the ungraspable in grey or white or sometimes black, I read now is wrought of Forms, this water overhead. What Science seeks to calibrate quickens my palette, hand and knife and revives my boyish eyes to see pictures in the sky. — The series of cloud studies painted by John