Mapping the Stars of the Enlightenment
by Elizabeth Henderson
Lacaille,
you clip the heavens
in a compass arc
take a sea of monstrous stars
and make an ordered space
for instruments of science, the mind
a place to control the Chaos
of 10,000 suns, transfixed
in the columns of your art,
but find in the darkness
of your heart still lurk
Copyright © 2003, Elizabeth Henderson
Circinus, the Drawing Compass
by Nicolas-Louis de Lacaille
Elizabeth Henderson is a southern poet and astronomer. She thanks her mother for teaching her the stars in the sky, and her father for giving her the moon in a telescope.