Oysgeshsternt by Sandra Horn

 

Oysgeshsternt is a Yiddish word. It means crowded with stars. I heard it recently at the Purbeck International Chamber Music Festival as part of their Forgotten Voices programme. I love it – the programme and the word. We stayed on after the concerts had ended and had a few more days walking around various beautiful places in that part of Dorset, including the church at Moreton with its etched-glass windows by Whistler.

 

We’ve not been back home long, and I am spun out and all out of ideas, so having started with oysgeshsternt, I’ll go on with a theme of heavenly bodies and share some poems about the night sky and various planets. I’m not sure it fits with what Authors Electric is about, but it is the best I can do for now. 

SKY-WATCHING

 

Out in the street as the evenings drew in

that time between supper and bed, we lay

flat on our backs, looking up at the sky,

 naming constellations, tracking the moon

from sickle blade to dinner plate, and back

clear night after night after night,

watching Charles’ Wagon’s leisurely tilt, 

up on its shaft, then all the way over,

Cassiopea spinning in slo-mo

The Seven Sisters all in a huddle,

six always smiling, one always weeping –

finding the North star, red-tinted Mars,

squinting along the Milky Way

reluctantly swapping the tarmac, the cold air

for softness and warmth when we were called in,

off to our beds with heads full of stories,

eyes full of sky.

 

CONTACT

 Night after night, through aeons,

the Pleiades signal to Earth;

on-off, dark-light, dash-dot,

encryptions we cannot decode.

 

But here in our waters, small larval creatures,

diatoms, desmids, molluscs and fishes

send messages back in codes of their own – 

Starlight to Ocean

 Luciferin to Sky

 

EARTH SPEAKS TO MOON

 The split, when it came, was cataclysmic.

Afterwards, there was a need

for distance between us – each with our own space,

but visible, I to you, you to me,

tethered together and apart.

Division of the assets was unequal –

this was not our choice.

You, like a womb-starved twin, empty,

silent, without the means to breathe,

your pale light merely borrowed.

I, the favoured one, abundantly alive,

fertile, burgeoning –

and yet,

my nights and days, the turning

of my seasons, ebb and flow of tides,

are gifts from you. You anchor me,

steady me,

keep me as I am.   

 

 

 NEPTUNE

It lurks in the darkest reaches from the sun.

Its days are short – not that it matters,

it’s seasons long – not that you’d notice.

It has been summer there for forty years

and counting, whatever ‘summer’ means

in this perpetual gloom. Cloaked in a soup

of toxic gasses, battered by winds

of uncountable speed, its surface frozen

to depths unthinkable, its core heated

beyond imagining, it is all extremes,

all mystery, like a god.

 

EARTH SPEAKS TO MARS

 

I look for you from time to time,

your pinkish glow is easy to make out.

Sometimes I see you rising

from low over the Downs, straight up

towards the zenith, as if you’re trying to escape.

Sometimes you creep, timid, low in the sky.

There was that conjunction with Venus,

you ascendant just for once,

above a crescent moon, lolling on its back.

I hope you enjoyed the moment.

Once, aeons ago, we both were blue  – remember?

Water ruled us, rivers, oceans, mighty floods, 

surging with life-to-be – but then,

too small and much too close

to our relentless star, beset

by solar winds, you lost it all.

Atmosphere stripped, scattered

into the void. Waters boiled away,

iron rocks burned to rust, to dust.

I see you now, a silent, shrouded ghost,

but remember how you sparkled once, aeons ago.

 

VENUS

 

I have seen you, pendent on a sickle moon,

A glittering diamond hanging from an ear,

A potent symbol of enduring love.

 

From here, your other side’s invisible:

your hellish heat, your violent gales,

Your poisonous atmosphere.

 

The turbulence of lust, behind

The shining face of love.

 

 

That’s all, folks!