In the words of Monty Python
this is getting too silly.

Or else it's not.

Is all this stuff still archived?
If so, perhaps we've been letting the standards go claywards.

In which case, I will attempt to counter this by typing out Watchers of the
Skies by DB.
BTW Does anyone else find that it's a way of getting into a poem?
I got the notion from Maurice Scully. Writing as an act. Records. Trying
to keep a rhythm.

Randolph Healy

Watchers of the Skies David Bromige

So you think there may be something to astrlogy
That human life to some degree or other
Must be influenced by planets & by stars

Though not completely
A range remains
A range for human action originating in oneself

Inspired by others probably
In response to other humans I expect
One way or another

You think that force from outer space
To some extent determines human fate
And by studying the lore

By applying one's mind to the records
Human beings have been keeping down the years
Each in his own time & place Own language

Each in the year that that recorder was alive
Moving among his or her own kind
ONe can read how forces such as these

Influence behavior
So that a system one believes in operates
Assuring us both by & of its constancy

It's an attractive proposition
Not easy to discount
One can laugh at it but will it go away

A system of belief that has persisted as it has
Why shouldn't there be something to it
The moon pulls at the oceans & the land

We know the sun is source of all
Our all How like these are to a planet & a star
How small they are compared to most

Of course they're relatively close
Humans have imagined them as wife & husband
Sun & daughter Relatively

Each is close to us as a husband or a wife
Relative to men & women who aren't cohabiting with one
Or won't Or can't Or haven't for a while

Desire can see the outlines of the furthest mountain
But love is blind
One sees the Earth with fresh eyes from the moon

Why couldn't there be something to it
Perhaps it isn't true It's valid though
Given the initial premise

Given that some heavenly body
Apparently remote
Could in a sense be thought to show an interest

Who wouldn't fall to plotting
Become familiar with its course
Its customary haunts Already in its power

Once upon a time In fact
Once upon a New Years Eve The eve of 1800
Piazzi saw a star It was quite small

Not catalogued His heart leapt up
In the constellation Taurus
He called it Ceres

Though it was the first
Olbers took the next step
Using the ephemeris of Gauss

On March 28 1802 Not too far from Ceres
In his line of sight
A second planet in the gap

The so-called gap
Between Jupiter & Mars
Olbers wrote to Bode

Did Pallas & Ceres always travel in their current orbits
In peaceful proximation
Or are both debris of a former & a larger planet

Which exploded Huth
Thought not His mind was quite made up
Maybe he was right I can't decide

These tiny planets are as old as all the others
The matter they are formed of
Coagulated Forming many such small spheres

Not much time passed Relatively speaking
Before astronomers began to tire of their profusion
Said one who has remained anonymous

Nevertheless we know his thoughts on this
One planetoid was a sensation
A dozen fine

Fifty were still interesting
Today I call them Vermin of the skies
Their number now is estimated to be 30,000

Or more than 30,000
We do not find them mentioned
In the ancients Their lore doesn't exist

Except in recent books
Take Hermes for example
Astronomers could not give absolute assurance

That a body such as Hermes might not run into the EArth
In December 1937 Hermes passed the Earth
At a distance somewhat under 500,000 miles

This was not the closest that it could have come
It could have come as close as 220,000
Closer than the moon

With what anguish many must have waited
In Hell nor were they out of it
Until the future came to pass And Hermes guided them

Are they to blame It weighs 3000 million tons
Tiny for a planetoid But many times the mass
Of the object which caused the mile-wide impace crater

Out in Arizona
What object That object whose impact on what's known
         as Arizona
That crater tells us of

How to re-write the lore of planetary influence
Now that the planetoids are here to stay
And always were

Since at least 100 million years ago
About the time that flowers appeared on Earth
Flowers Which Darwind called an abominable mystery

They spread so fast
Appeared so suddenly
Like the human beings their appearance is associated with

No doubt these asteroids or planetoids
Shed their rays upon our Earth
Exerted & exert their subtle influences

Hundreds of astronomers will testify to this
Since 1800
To their influence on human actions

Thought is action of a sort
And speech Sad not to have a tape
An interview with Shakespeare Dante

Reading in Italian
Thought that doesn't come to action though Beyond its
     brain
Does it leave a trace

Fine indentations on the brainpan possibly
On cerebella long returned to earth
Such is our lot We come back on earth

Writing is an act
Writing makes a kind of record
The records our astrology is founded on

These are written reconds in the main
Imperfect though
They leave a gap unfilled

The story of the planetoids
Of their effect on our behavior
This gap makes a kind of crater

What thoughts belong to them
Perhaps a pattern will appear
This present writing springs from them

But can influence be willed
It's more a matter of what dreams have they inspired
Since the explosion

The explosions Hirayama
Thought there'd been not one but five
EAch causing what already had been called a family

Because its members moved in similar orbits
Perhaps a complex of such patterns might be traced
Maybe direct examination of a planetoid

Will provide a clue Eros
Is most likely Willy Ley believes
His book Watchers of the Skies

Is cited here He means astronomers
But each of us looks up from time to time
Struck with the beauty Our souls are amplified

It's hard to stop
Harder to bear sometimes
And then this faculty can rescue us

And take us to its heavens
At times the stars Venus Mars gleam through
At times shine a pattern

Perhaps the truth that they appear to point to
Is recorded by the watchers
Of the postures of the watchers of the skies

Visit the Sound Eye website at:
http://indigo.ie/~tjac/sound_eye_hme.htm
or find more Irish writing at:
http://www.nd.edu/~ndr/issues/ndr7/contents.html

----------
> From: david bromige <[log in to unmask]>
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: astronomical proportions revisited
> Date: 14 December 1999 00:32
>
> Thank you, Randolph. I _thought_ that was Uranus we trans-atlantics could
> see from here. We had already agreed it was a heavenly body.
>
>
> (they dont count messages per day on this List, right?)
>
> David
>
>
>
>


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