<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;" class="">Planetarium<div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><div class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span><i style="font-size: 14px;" class="">Thinking of Caroline Herschel (1750–1848)</i></div><div class=""><i style="font-size: 14px;" class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>astronomer, sister of William; and others.</i></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">A woman in the shape of a monster</div><div class="">a monster in the shape of a woman</div><div class="">the skies are full of them</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">a woman ‘in the snow</div><div class="">among the Clocks and instruments</div><div class="">or measuring the ground with poles’</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">in her 98 years to discover</div><div class="">8 comets</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">she whom the moon ruled</div><div class="">like us</div><div class="">levitating into the night sky</div><div class="">riding the polished lenses</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Galaxies of women, there</div><div class="">doing penance for impetuousness</div><div class="">ribs chilled</div><div class="">in those spaces of the mind</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">An eye,</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""> ‘virile, precise and absolutely certain’</div><div class=""> from the mad webs of Uranusborg</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""> encountering the NOVA</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">every impulse of light exploding</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">from the core</div><div class="">as life flies out of us</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""> Tycho whispering at last</div><div class=""> ‘Let me not seem to have lived in vain’</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">What we see, we see</div><div class="">and seeing is changing</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">the light that shrivels a mountain</div><div class="">and leaves a man alive</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Heartbeat of the pulsar</div><div class="">heart sweating through my body</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">The radio impulse</div><div class="">pouring in from Taurus</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""> I am bombarded yet I stand</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">I have been standing all my life in the</div><div class="">direct path of a battery of signals</div><div class="">the most accurately transmitted most</div><div class="">untranslatable language in the universe</div><div class="">I am a galactic cloud so deep so invo-</div><div class="">luted that a light wave could take 15</div><div class="">years to travel through me And has</div><div class="">taken I am an instrument in the shape</div><div class="">of a woman trying to translate pulsations</div><div class="">into images for the relief of the body</div><div class="">and the reconstruction of the mind.</div></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>- Adrienne Rich</div></body></html>