Present-day astronomy, vast, complex, is looking through darkness to distant objects and times. Yet its discoveries aren’t exclusively scientific: from Pluto’s moons to Curiosity Rovers, the sky remains a place where math meets myth. Now, in Zero Kelvin, Richard Norman’s poetry probes the new heavens that are being generated daily by astronomical research.

Theology

Objects crossing or approaching the orbit of Neptune … are given mythological names associated with the underworld. – “How Minor Planets Are Named,” International Astronomy Union

[…]

Theology, the study of dark matter,
conclusively has proven
the well of hell is zero Kelvin.

Movement ceases,
molecules foetally curl into themselves.
And at the lowest circle of our galaxy

a black hole squats.
O wondrous Goatse of another realm!
Radio source,

mass of four million suns,
beams out pure revelation.
Cults worship at its altar.

The faithful pray:
Do not leave your house –
sit quietly and listen.

An LED illuminates
the ether in the vitrine.
And models show the diodes rapidly receding

and the backlit screen expanding,
and the transudation,
and something dug up from deep within

that will not act and will not leave,
a thing that makes a truce with space,
a relic of the underworld.