Astronomy
       

The astronomers, you say, can see so far into a distance, it's possible to witness the birth of everything. Yes, I say, but the earliest astronomy was a star chart for the dead. How many times have we had this debate? Across one microscopic swathe of night sky, you say, many eons of light are passing. A perfect darkness, I say, teeming with nebulae, slow, half frozen fish. What I would give to catch one of those fish, you say. What you need is a harpoon, I say. That's poetry, I say. That's astronomy, you say, and you always bow a little from the waist, like you have won this argument.

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from The Bitter Oleander
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