Solar Eclipse Poem by Ananta Madhavan

urple, an outflung hand,
A slap on the face of the sun.
Why this outrage against our sustaining host?
- -

There was an artist who wished to paint
A huge round canvas which would be
A mirror to the sun. Ice-blue,
Blood-red, so fierce a scarlet that,
It would sear the retina, a burnt disk,
Too hot to behold. Pressing the eyelid,
Dilating hoop on rippling hoop,
The eclipse of the sun may be imagined.

He had been told it was a phenomenon
Of the moon interposed between earth
And sun; it could blind our mortal eyes.
The artist dipped his brush in purple dye
And absently occluded his intended canvas,
He painted a shadow hand in futile wrath:
A slap on the face of the eclipsed sun.

In boyhood I recited a Vedic chant to Surya
Let art be pitted against superstition,
If we can't love Nature by way of science.