1982 Poem by Richard George

My lowest ebb, that winter:
Breathing, tasting minus centigrade
I studied the sky's silent score.
I scoured the barren quarter
Under glittering Orion
For the tiny constellations
On the edge of the horizon,
Caelum, Columba
But in binoculars' grainy cast
All I saw were other people's windows.

Numb and sad, one evening
I caught through lacing sycamores
A small pinkish disc:
Elusive Mercury,
Following the sun down.

Kinder Spring scrolled new text up:
I scanned for the furthest northward grasp
Of another hemisphere's Centaur
In vain. But once,3 A.M.,
Sleepless, looking out by chance
Antares, in Scorpio:
Red beacon in a bracelet of stars
And back I stared, back, back
Five hundred years of light
To the centre of our galaxy

Before I was born.