To Science
i
A woodcut
of an open sphere of bent slats,
a shaft through the middle
mounted on a rack,
figures around the arched edge,
an angel, hands on the crank.
Inside our heads, the sphere revolves;
time passes. A press pressed it out
twenty years ago, this forgery,
in Fair Haven, New York,
bought at a Renaissance Faire.
The real thing, in 1490, in Leipzig,
the frontispiece for a learned almanac
of prognostica ex dictis philosophorus
by Master Wensel Faber von Budweis.
We watched Allen Þe Printmaker
press prints on his recreation of a
fifteenth-century press.
The paper is now yellowing
round the edges of the mat.
Paper passes.
Pretending need not be pretentious:
to place ourselves where we are not,
to be ourselves where we have not been;
reminding ourselves that rugged days
become fragile years, imitations of themselves,
kept alive by the capricious judgments
of the gods of the future.
ii
Arranged around the framework ball
the planet gods, hours of the day
in order of their heavenly speed,
encircle the small central sphere of Earth,
its towered castle perched on top
(The earth was round in 1490
and had been so for centuries.
That we were taught Columbus proved
the world was round: 20th Century
propaganda that medieval folk were stupid).
The seven planets: Moon, Mercury, Venus,
the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn.
(Then, of course, the universe was geocentric,
and would be so for two centuries, for most.
Galileo was imprisoned for moving Earth in 1632.
A few today think we are still at the center)
The angel cranking the ball
still turns our days in their planetary order:
each god reigns for one hour of twenty-four,
the whole day named for the first-hour god.
(If the Sun’s hour comes first, the day is Sunday.
The hours tick by, and the first hour of the next day
is the Moon’s realm and so every fourth god has a turn)
But in English Norse gods displace the Roman:
Mars is fourth from the moon, but
Tiw’s the god of war in the icy North,
and so Tuesday it is, and so with Woden, Thor, and Fria.
(The anomaly—since there must be always one—
Saturn is a Roman god, an odd god related to
Greek Chronos, a Titan not a god, responsible for time.
Saturn’s symbol is a scythe: it’s time that cuts us down,
and Saturday that ends the week.
And so outmoded antique science arranges our weekdays:
our smartphones line them up,
as would a monk hunched over in his scriptorium,
as incorporeal software haunts our lives
turning the wheel on which we turn,
one which we cannot turn ourselves.
iii
Hard not to notice on the wheel’s left side
nude and nippled Venus, button ticked on
the rounded curve of her belly above her
shadowed pudenda, as she holds an arrow erect,
but atop the wheel, no flesh exposed
armored from crowned head to pointed foot,
brandishing a broadsword and clasping a globus cruciferens,
not holding on, with one hidden hand as are the others,
but sitting in a carved and cushioned chair,
reigns Mars, the god of war.
A Wheel of Fortune rides gain and loss on its
Ferris wheel, but not as optional amusement.
All, even kings, especially kings and queens, must
take a seat. Mars sits at the height of his power,
but the angel’s clockwise winding will dump him
from his chair and he will empty one hand
to hang on as the wheel takes him down.
Then here comes the sun dawning to its noon,
and when it starts to set, Venus, the evening star,
arises to make love not war. And so it goes.
The night sky seeded with our fears and struggles,
attached to the wheel of necessity, so the poor can see
no matter how large the gap between the low and
the high and mighty, we all fall into the dirt.
Grim Saturn on the wheel, staring down,
face in full profile, chin-bearded jaw set, scythe on shoulder,
himself heads for oblivion
The sprawling world that made the gods is gone:
their temples, ruins; their names, ghosts of the imagination.
Even the angel turns its crank today in hostile times
when angels are more messengers of kitsch than the divine,
like coal-fired power plants, relics of a killing age,
that turn their armatures and belch their smoke
while the voices preaching them, nearly lost
in the metallic din of machinery, fade
as more eyes turn toward the sun.
-T.P. Murphy
