Poem for You

Selected from the National Poetry Day competition Post a Poem.
To see the poems previously published on the theme of Stars click here

So What?
By Keith Turner

So the stars have stayed silent
  so far
so SETI has heard only static
  so far 

So we listen still. 

Above a bowl on Arecibo the cables
  tighten, and pounce on every pin.
On Jodrell Bank the noise is sifted,
  strained, assimilated, stored.
Meanwhile on Mauna Kea the light accumulates
  photon by photon like grains of sand,
  into a gallery of dumb stars.
One whisper from those stellar corpses
  would awaken all mankind.

 So we listen still. 

Here on Earth three thousand years ago
  on a plain at Giza dead Egyptian kings
  would hope to sail across the night
  in eternal constellations, bright forever.
But now we know so many of the stars we see
  are also dead, long dead and gone.
One whisper from those stellar corpses
  would awaken all mankind. 

So we listen still. 

So what if the stars have stayed silent
  so far
so long as we listen still.

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Page last updated: 24th February 2014