Hearing the Language of the Universe

Credit: ESO/B. Tafreshi,
some rights reserved

Be not so dull; fold the sky into my palms like
the prayer book of scientists and recite to me
the names of stars in their native star tongue:
the beep and blink of their spinning, the chroma
of their burning, their weight in time and space;
would that I knew
the universe like you do: the many ways you
speak your knowledge of it, like a lover's secret
laid bare before the eyes of those who know not
to read Love down to the very meaning of Her name;
would that you spoke my language like you do
that starry tongue, the words that even I don't know
are part of me; you do not hear them, the prayers
from my hands, cannot see the hunger in my wet
eyes as they watch you love another; I am always
the other, the one
that would but never will, observer, ever unobserved.