From the unofficial history of the European Southern Observatory in Chile

When our war is over
we go to Chile 
buy a mountain in the desert
build telescopes 
with the power to detect
a naked flame on the Moon

Here
the sky curves closer to the Earth
galaxies lightyears away
are observed
young stars shrouded in dust
are revealed
new comets
are discovered
recorded
catalogued

But we can’t look at everything
the Moon is too brigh
Jupiter burns our camera
we avoid explosions in the South

We run out of things to see
so we invent new things
dark matter to stop galaxies flying apart
dark energy to speed up the universe
but we can’t find these dark things

Our telescopes have the power to detect
a naked flame on the Moon
or a light shone by a soldier
into the face of a prisoner
in a camp not far from
here

Here the lone and level sands stretch far away
but I’m no Shelley writing Ozymandias
I’m only Goldschmidt et al.
I publish what I see

I can’t see the dark things
planes bombing the presidential palace
explosions in the South
camps hidden from view

This is one problem which we cannot solve –
find x
where x is equal
to the number of people
buried in the desert
not far from
here

‘The Unofficial History of the European Southern Observatory’ © Pippa Goldschmidt. ‘The Unofficial History of the European Southern Observatory’ from Where Rockets Burn Through: Contemporary Science Fiction Poems from the UK © Pippa Goldschmidt. Reprinted by kind permission of the author and Penned in the Margins, 2013. 

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Pippa Goldschmidt reads 'From the Unofficial History of the European Southern Observatory in Chile'.

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Pippa Goldschmidt read 'Physics for the Unwary Student'.

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Pippa Goldschmidt reads 'The Ballad of the Immortal Gene'.