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This month I decided to get mystical thinking about space and the universe. As you can imagine, stars feature in many metaphors for love, but we also have those other heavenly bodies too! The music was really fun to find too and I went for a mixture of very introspective, link to the characteristics of planets and then mentions of stars and things in the lyrics. Listen back on Mixcloud!
Galactic Love poem by Adrian Henri
Warm your feet at the sunset
Before we go to bed
Read your book by the light of Orion
With Sirius guarding your head
Then reach out and switch off the planets
We'll watch them go out one by one
You kiss me and tell me you love me
By the light of the last setting sun
We'll both be up early tomorrow
A new universe has begun
To Summarise a Galaxy By Beyza Ozer
how do I show you love when it is not attached to a video of me putting a nail to a balloon on loop? when a heart beats fast this is what I imagine. something too fast to see happen / too loud to forget & from here, the ground, we are beginning to look like lightning or the frameworks of buildings too far away or the line where the lake meets the sky. you are every 1996 space exploration gone right & I am waiting for you to come home with a backpack filled with moon rock & stardust to keep around our apartment. we find small jars to hide behind our pillows & fill every corner with something only we have touched / the rest in our cat’s fur. you remind me of something like a firefly underneath my tongue with so much spark I am finally able to live out my dream of becoming some sort of lighthouse even though sometimes I fall back into a dark galaxy of faults. it isn’t always possible to jam sharp stars into the round holes of us. I want to tell you that SpaceX named a platform for rockets to land on Just Read the Instructions & another Of Course I Still Love You & wouldn’t it be nice to be still in the water for once
To Jane: The Keen Stars Were Twinkling by Percy Bysshe Shelley
I.
The keen stars were twinkling,
And the fair moon was rising among them,
Dear Jane.
The guitar was tinkling,
But the notes were not sweet till you sung them
Again.
II.
As the moon's soft splendour
O'er the faint cold starlight of Heaven
Is thrown,
So your voice most tender
To the strings without soul had then given
Its own.
III.
The stars will awaken,
Though the moon sleep a full hour later
To-night;
No leaf will be shaken
Whilst the dews of your melody scatter
Delight.
IV.
Though the sound overpowers,
Sing again, with your dear voice revealing
A tone
Of some world far from ours,
Where music and moonlight and feeling
Are one.
Stargazing by Glyn Maxwell
The night is fine and dry. It falls and spreads
the cold sky with a million opposites
that, for a moment, seem like a million souls
and soon, none, and then, for what seems a long time,
one. Then of course it spins. What is better to do
than string out over the infinite dead spaces
the ancient beasts and spearmen of the human
mind, and, if not the real ones, new ones?
But, try making them clear to one you love –whoever is standing by you is one you love
when pinioned by the stars — you will find it quite
impossible, but like her more for thinking
she sees that constellation.
After the wave of pain, you will turn to her
and, in an instant, change the universe
to a sky you were glad you came outside to see.
This is the act of all the descended gods
of every age and creed: to weary of all
that never ends, to take a human hand,
and go back into the house.
The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman
I will love you forever; whatever happens. Till I die and after I die, and when I find my way out of the land of the dead, I’ll drift about forever, all my atoms, till I find you again. I’ll be looking for you, every moment, every single moment. And when we do find each other again, we’ll cling together so tight that nothing and no one’ll ever tear us apart. Every atom of me and every atom of you. We’ll live in birds and flowers and dragonflies and pine trees and in clouds and in those little specks of light you see floating in sunbeams. And when they use our atoms to make new lives, they won’t just be able to take one, they’ll have to take two, one of you and one of me.
Come back every second Tuesday of the month on Voices Radio for more fun music selections and readings you might use for weddings or funerals. You can also listen back to this show and others on Mixcloud.