Jemma Borg
Relic
Relic
Bell Laboratories, New jersey, 1965
One whole year on our hands and knees,
clearing pigeons from the curious ear
of the antenna, listening for silence
under the city's noise and the pulsar's roar
and still this sound as weather makes at a door,
a low worry everywhere, burrowing
into the hours from the immovable darkness,
uncurling its strong horsehead,
until we catch it, finally, as a telescope does
in its wide dish, until we hear it
for what it is: this sound of creation
whose infinitesimal enormity
is now a thin travelling irritation;
this sound of time clocking on
and now corroded into this radio hiss.