My Father Is England's Finest Astronomer.
And we know this now: what will happen tomorrow is not a curse. Or so
he tells us. These things were not understood, not so long ago, nothing was understood,
a different time then: people were sillier, with sea monsters
at oceans’ edges. Maggots emerging from meat. Frogs being borne of mud.
Can you even imagine? We are all hushed to bed, but
we can barely calm our breath,
wondering what tomorrow will be like when the Sun goes black, if birds
shall stop singing, flowers curl to sleep.
And some day, he says, they will think we instead are fools, and your grandchildren’s grandchildren’s grandchildren will know more than you ever will. But I cannot see their faces
anywhere behind my own closed eyes. They are so far away in time.
Caring for their spirits and minds, what knowledge they will have or not—even though my own blood—bores me greatly. It is a heft finally pulling me to sleep. This may be what adult persons call “sorrow.” Shaping even Papa’s eclipse into a simple wooden toy hoop.
