Jodrell Bank – Patric Dickinson

Who were they, what lonely menImposed upon the fact of nightThe fiction of constellationsAnd made commensurableThe distances betweenThemselves their loves and their doubtOf government and nations;Who made the dark stableWhen the light was not? NowWe receive the blind codesOf spaces beyond the spanOf our myths, and a long dead starMay only echo howThere are no loves nor godsMen can invent to explainHow lonely all men are. This poem is from a collection called “The World I See”, by Patric Dickinson, which was published in 1960. The poem was inspired by a visit to Jodrell Bank observatory. I have posted it before, but it seems apt to post it again now.