The Very Small Baseline Group Convenes at The Cat and Fiddle

A groaning table of empties makes up
our Very Small Array — a barley-scented
interferometer. Here we can study the cosmos
and drink. We tune into the microwave sky:
to the froth at the edge of the universe.
We sup in the dusk, everything glows
with its own light: the hedgerow, lawn,
the atoms inside the glass. The Milky Way
sings in a half-inch of Guiness
a song of distant path when the world
was a moment old. We gather it all in our mugs,
in a pub garden on the edge of the moors,
looking down on Jodrell Bank: Queen
of the red-light district, cocking her huge lug
to the mayhem beyond our patch.
The bats are in on it, hunting in ultrasound,
catching moths in their fangs, while frogs
bark in the meadows, one to the other,
a vast unfathomable love-song. I finish my pint
and add my glass to the phalanx: the more
we drink
the clearer we see, as any old soak will tell you.
I tip back my head to look at the Pleiades
and tumble, arse over tit, into the damp grass.
I lie in my cups under the bling of the
northern sky.
I can hear it now, I can see it all clearly,
all and nothing, just the whole sky blazing.

Neil Rollinson