Blog

Comment on a British Government Policy; or, Rwanda Howl

I wished the better for my native land, ah!
I wished her wiser rule and fairer wage
And honesty and peace and fearless speech,
I gave my voice and vote and signature.
And so my native country smashed my teeth
And hung me like a flute to play for screams
And shot my child and disappeared my wife
And I on concrete lay for seven years,
Kept sleepless by my dreams of what I’d do
With every morning of that stolen life,
Escaped, unlike some others, stumbled out
And bribed and begged my way from month to month
Through lands as blank to me as I to them,
Trudging and limping, dodging border guards,
Sleeping in ditches, sneezing, eating snow,
And paid my last to fall into a boat
That tossed like paper in the drenching wakes
Of ships that towered past us in the night,
And crawled ashore on Britain, that free land, ah!
Britain, whose ancient generosity
Had fertilized her talents and her blood,
Whose minds had clarified the rights of man.
Here might I rest and heal, forgive the world,
Repay my welcomers with useful work,
Even reach home to find and save my love,
And taste at last that sugar, happiness.
No. Britain growing old had shrunk and stiffened,
Had lost the liberal brightness of her eye,
Loved not her neighbor, scorned the Golden Rule,
And Britain said: You have no Document.
You came without permission, and this proves
You have not suffered and do not require
Asylum. Back you go to where you fled,
Whose officers will greet you as you land, ah!
You balk? Then here’s your ticket, no return,
Five thousand miles, to tropic Africa–
By God, we’ll make you fear to try again!
Don’t argue, it’s an Act, there’s no appeal.
Get lost, fuck off, heraus, scram, imshi, anda!
Put out your wrists and ankles to be shackled.
What are these scars, you tried to off yourself?
You’ll live your days out in a micro land,
Poor, densely peopled, stained by genocide.
Her regimen will make you feel at home.
You may have heard of her. Her name is Rwanda.

Back issues, and backward motion

Just after the Moon backed away from totally eclipsing the Sun on April 20, Mercury will go into retrograde (backward) motion on April 21. Not an important event, but it gives a pretext to mention Back Issues.

Back issues, that is, of the Astronomical Calendar.

Many people like to have a full set of those annual books, with their cover pictures and stories, and some have had them bound in volumes by fives. Well, if you have a gap in your collection, you now have the chance to fill it. We have a few copies left for most of the years.

Any that you acquire will be autographed for you by the author.

 

Mercury turning back

As for Mercury’s stationary moment, when it begins to move back westward in relation to the starry background, here is the scene this evening, which for America is the nearest to that moment.

At the time and place of the picture, Mercury is 5° above the horizon. If you look closely, you can see that the arrow showing the planet’s motion over five days curves up and then back down. The arrow is very short, because the change of position near the stationary moment is slow.

This is not quite the same as the moment of maximum eastward elongation or angular distance out eastward from the Sun, which happened on April 11. In the time between those dates, Mercury was still appearing to move eastward on the map of the sky, but more slowly, so that it was beginning to fall back toward the Sun.

This space view, from 15° north of the ecliptic plane, shows the paths of the planets in April, and sightlines from Earth to Mercury at the dates of its easternmost elongation and of becoming stationary in longitude. The dashed line is the vernal equinox direction, or Earth-Sun direction on March 20, from which all sky positions are measured.

 

__________

This weblog maintains its right to be about astronomy or anything under the sun.

ILLUSTRATIONS in these posts are made with precision but have to be inserted in another format.  You may be able to enlarge them on your monitor.  One way: right-click, and choose “View image” or “Open image in new tab”, then enlarge.  Or choose “Copy image”, then put it on your desktop, then open it.  On an iPad or phone, use the finger gesture that enlarges (spreading with two fingers, or tapping and dragging with three fingers).  Other methods have been suggested, such as dragging the image to the desktop and opening it in other ways.