The Transit of Venus  

Transit:
The apparent passage of a celestial body
across the meridian of a place,
or of a smaller planet
across the disc of a larger.
          Webster's Dictionary

 

A passage
Periodic,
Not transitory,
Of the planet Venus
Between Earth
And Sun.

The heavenly bodies
Connecting,
In space
And time,
Their relationship
To each other
Fixed
By immutable laws.
Venus and Earth
Move with slow grace
In elliptical orbits
Around the Sun,
Contributing to the
Unheard music
Of the spheres.

Until
That moment
When they align,
Venus appearing
From Earth
A black dot
Against the
Disc of the
Flaming Sun.

Sic transit gloria mundi.

Ah, the glory of it!
As transitory as the beauty of the world
And human love.

Observed in 1631
By astronomers
Looking through a glass darkly
To protect the naked eye
From all that brightness.

She transits across the blazing disc.
A phenomenon observed
And then predicted,
More or less,
Because Venus
Defies clockwork
Her path
Not circular
But elliptical
So that
Sometimes her coming
Is quicker
And the companion transit
Slower.

At intervals
Of one hundred and twenty
To one hundred and thirty years,
She transits in June
And, then,
December,
Eight
To twelve and a half
Years later.

She is radiant,
In all her movements,
A goddess
Of earthly delights
Born
Out of the spray
From the severed member
Of a god.

She gathers
All sensuality
To herself.
Night-time pleasures
Are her domain.
Moonlight
Accents bodily beauty
And makes lovers
Mad with lust.

I too transit,
Pass and change
Under the influence of love,
Which is periodic,
A modality
Of constants
And inconstants
With endings in beginnings
And beginnings in endings.

Each falling
In love,
A transit
Of this heavenly body.

The pattern not apparent-
A journey
The destination
Revealing itself
Only when it is reached.
Lovers' meetings
And partings
Played out
Against a cosmic backdrop
Of change
And recurrence.

She never
Comes back,
Exactly,
To the same place
Or time
And her offer,
Time limited,
Is a blessing
And a gift.

 

 

 

 

Venus transits next
On June 8th, 2004
And, then,
June 6-7, 2012.

© 2006 Adriana Davies