Cover artwork for "Heaven, Man, Earth"Lots of stars, planets and satellites
seem to be mute, but he who
can understand their language
penetrates lots of mysteries.

Olaus Roemer,
a passionate scientist,
knew this language
and always listened to them.

Thus, the stars whispered to him
the light does not come suddenly,
but its speed is finite
when it cuts the void like a sword.

Oh,
mysteries so great are penetrated
by those who can understand
the star word!

Copyright © 2005, Zigmund Tauberg
English translation from the Romanian by Andrei Dorian Gheorghe

Translator’s Note: This poem was included in the 2005 book of Zigmund Tauberg (when he was 78 years old), Heaven, Man, Earth, dedicated to his former student, Harald Alexandrescu (1945-2005) —ex-coordinator of “Admiral Vasile Urseanu” Municipal Observatory in Bucharest — and containing astropoems composed during his whole life. (I must add here that Zigmund Tauberg was also my teacher of mathematics in the high school). The cover image of his book, made by Toma Hirth (a Romanian well-known artist of the Cosmos), is reproduced in this page.

Zigmund Tauberg teaches mathematics in Romania. A popularizer of astronomy, he was named laureate for “pedagogical Astropoetry” at the Cosmopoetry Festival of the Romanian Society for Meteors and Astronomy-SARM.