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First Light

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South African Obs

     praise poem of the Southern African Large Telescope

"At the mountain's top, I reach up,
I fill my haversack with stars."
      - Tatamkhulu Afrika: Nightrider

when the sun sets
we stand in the falling light
stretch out our arms,
catch the falling drops.

Stobie & Marang cup our CCD,
save all falling photons,
deepening into a pool of light
whose surface reflects:

stretch marks from the birth of time
hints of gravity's lenses
the pulse of stars
& mating dance of binary suns;

galaxies digitalized, a heaven
captured in butterfly nets of circuitry
red on the readout, disked for storage:
mysteries, solved & sensuous.

--Keith Gottschalk