In response to Andrew’s post about the Universe and Carl Sagan’s birthday, I went into the vault for this prose poem about a 19th-century French astronomer whose name includes my last name. I found this scientist by accident while researching a college assignment in the 1970s.–PM

I Heard Camille Flammarion Talking

“Before love’s velocity knocks me down, let me return to the safer distance of stars. The distant always grabbed me—I desire women who know where the wind starts. Scholars called me precocious when they weighed my book—a work on the Universe by the son of a Parisian shopkeeper. It’s been a long time since October 9, 1847. What child remembers a black sun? One who chases cloud formations early and later the hearts of volcanoes. Algebra got me into balloons—circus tents cut loose! The best wings I’d get. Think of space travelers recording the moon’s tone as chimes. At my observatory in Juvisy I locked onto the red planet. I was famous. My Popular Astronomy told people what was out there for the first time. Go back to Mars—the canals are there. Schiaparelli spotted them before he went blind, before he hid in Babylonian star charts. Percival Lowell imagined a race of engineers lacing the crust with their designs. He’d seen man-dug canals powering mills. Those straight ditches aren’t angel gutters. It’s insanity to claim sole membership in a cosmos spiked with light. Some men have minds like fists, when there’s a lesson in the moon and sun: constant change. Did I marry? Do you know me? Does it matter? The speed of love is dangerous, but riding it is worth the mysteries of Venus. There is salvation in immersion. The sky, a safe bride, was always there, with the she-moon rocking on her curve above a steaming, snow-capped planet.”

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—Paul Marion (c) 2009