November, 1833 & August, 1863
near thirty years ago as a boy not
yet the President of these United States
the church deacon woke him like God calling
saying Abraham, Abraham, it is
the last day: and he went outside and saw
the stars pouring down like rain on Illinois
casualties on both sides were in the
mid-thousands last month, better than last year
at the observatory, he mulls over
the plausible execution of Davis
telescope erupting from his famously
hideous face, cratered like the moon
which Mr. Hall points out is only half
bright as it normally would be in the sky
he waits for Hall to rotate the telescope
some degrees to the left, thinking of
all the boys that have come home since Gettysburg
Mr. President?
Yes.
It’s ready now, sir.
Thank you, Asaph. I would like to be alone.
she is fourth brightest in the dark overhead
he is thin and hunched over like a bird
at low tide in some dismal swamp, sickly
and overall, he thinks, not feeling well
thirty-seven years for the light to reach us
Hall had said: thirty-seven years for what,
he thinks, staring at this red dot, tattered
at the edges, like a pin of sunlight
seen through a crack in a closet door
he once hid in as a boy
a thousand times as luminous as ours
the same now as it was thirty-seven years
ago, picturing the cold planets that
rotate above him now, too distant to
imagine, but he does
he sees the worlds around Arcturus in
broad strokes, the way he sees China or Peru
he cannot see the bags of severed hands
unrecognizable as human but
readily recognizable as hands
hacked off some thirty-seven years ago
the same dead light that shone down on happy
firing squads and hordes of unknowable
but still human misery wraps around
the earth and goes on and on forever
carrying with it the unheard petitions
of a people who he feels know the same God
murdered in alien temples, now ruins
only animals unknown to any
human being there to gnaw on the bones
he shivers and sweats under a malign star
knowing that ours carries what we do off
into the night, trapping every moment
and sustaining it
nearing two years later, the sun carries
his martyrdom to foreign planets, soundless
in space: and in his dying moments, bleeding
he thinks that this is how angels speak
-- Jan E. Stanek is a writer who lives in the United States of America. Jan E. Stanek weighs one-hundred and ten pounds. Jan E. Stanek tweets from @stanizslaus on Twitter.