iii. Here’s the place where you stop and look up at the stars, catch sight of a comet, a meteor shower… Turn away from the glittering lights of what we have made – motorway, power station, factory, fun fair – and stand on the tower, craning your neck: the first star, then the north star, the bright one, and another and another, until the whole sky is full of stars and all those constellations. And look, a glow of light behind the nearest hill and then the moon appearing, very low and close as it rose that night a millennium and a half ago when those who had buried their dead up here in a boat-shaped coffin may have sat and watched the paths of stars, telling one another stories of a bear, a dog, a plough, a hunter in the sky. Elizabeth Burns iv. |