In The Year 2414
In the year 2414,
Jupiter and Saturn will pass closer to each other
Than they have been since tonight.
And at that time, no-one will write about the clouds
That filled this solstice sky at sunset,
Those woolly shrouds truncating
Even this shortest day;
How on this once-in-twenty-generations chance
To view the great conjunction, we stumbled
To windows and through overflow carparks,
Out to back gardens and sarsen stones,
Only to find that familiar foe of the weather
Where the stars should be.
And who will remember this, in time?
Who will remember us?
When even at their closest,
Mere arcminutes apart, these two
Remain 450 million miles away,
As far between us and the future,
Our time a shrinking blink seen
The wrong way through the telescope
We point towards the heavens.
In the year 2414,
They might cite in holographic academia,
Or flash on megalopolitan digital screens
That make Piccadilly Circus seem cave painting dim,
Or note on broadcasts beamed through buds directly to the brain,
That the great conjunction hasn’t shone this bright
Since the year 2020. And in that single mention
Will be all of us – the eight billion and falling,
From monarchs to milkmen,
Our woes and roads and love and news,
Our ways and crazes and crises, these days
And all who live in them, love in them,
Stood in them – this world of ours
Beneath the stars will in that time
Be nothing more than ancient history,
All of us like pagans to them,
Each of us archaeology.
I wanted to write about the solstice today, because I’ve always felt a certain connection to it – in a non-druidic way – as I was born on the summer solstice, the longest day of the year. So in a way, the winter solstice is the opposite of my birthday – an antipodean, anti-anniversary.
It was also a special concept in the world of the Catweazle Club, Oxford’s best live performance evening that I can only describe as a micless open mic night where anything (and I mean anything) goes. Rather than a traditional Christmas do, each December Catweazle would look skywards and celebrate the solstice instead – plugging in to the turn of the Earth and welcoming in the break of the new light from a spotlit room in the East Oxford Community Centre on Cowley Road.
As it is, this poem isn’t really about the solstice, after all that, because a slightly more unique interstellar happening was taking place above our heads today – the great conjunction, whereby Saturn and Jupiter effectively overlap in the night sky, creating a ‘double planet’, or, more seasonally, ‘the Christmas star’. It’s thought this was the celestial event that the Three Wise Men witnessed that drew them towards Bethlehem all those millennia ago. Whether that’s true or not, I can’t say, but I can tell you with certainty that as I looked out of my bedroom window across the recreation ground behind our house, there was nothing lighting up the heavens but the Christmas lights of the house opposite, shining off the puddles on the MUGA (Multi-Use Games Area.)
I’m hardly an astrologer, but I was disappointed not to see it, especially as I’ve read that it will never be as bright, nor as visible, for almost another 400 years. Having seen a news article mention that the two planets hadn’t been this close since 1623, the time of James VI and I, the Thirty Years War and the First Folio, it got me thinking of all the news articles to be written (or whatever technology they use instead) four centuries from now, and how all of this that’s going on at the moment will be a footnote to a footnote to a footnote, in the history books and starcharts of the yet-to-come.
So there we are. I’ll dedicate this one to all from the Catweazle Club, which has been in hiatus for obvious reasons for much of 2020. I shall miss the Solstice do especially, a night for collaborating with each other and harmonising with strangers. In 2017, the mercurial Pete Salmond and I actually did a duet, me reading ‘Christmas at the Greasy Spoon‘ as he played a mesmerisingly beautiful rendition of Silent Night on the guitar. There’s a video somewhere, I’ll try and find it for you. Talking of videos, here’s me reading an ode to Catweazle on the occasion of its 26th birthday, in absentia, earlier this year.
And while we’re on the subject – EXCITING news I probably should’ve mentioned earlier – on Wednesday night I’ll be doing a live gig over on my Facebook page, reading my favourite poems from this year’s Advent Calendar over a warm screen and a glass of something alcoholic. I would be delighted if you’d join me.
For now, here’s to the druids, the bards and the stars. Happy solstice, my friends.
The nights are getting shorter. Four days to go…
Owen x
The Poetry Advent Calendar 