The Four I Could Not Unsee (Galileo Galilei)

Lyrics

[Verse 1]
You ground the lenses
in your own workshop
because the Dutch
would not sell you
a good one
and the part of you
that needed
to see Jupiter properly
was bigger
than the part of you
that knew
how to wait
for a delivery
from Holland.

[Verse 2]
You put your eye
to the tube
on a clear cold night
in January
in Padua
and beside
the round body
of the planet
were four small lights
in a row,
and you watched them
for an hour
and they had moved,
and you watched them
the next night
and they had moved
again,
and you laughed out loud
in the workshop
because the only sentence
the four lights
were forming
was a sentence
no one in your century
had been
allowed
to say.

[Chorus]
So you said it.
You drew the four small lights
in your own hand
and you sent the drawing
to a Medici
in a sealed envelope
and you named the moons
after his family
because you knew
the family
would not let
the inquisition
keep
the moons
from being seen
by anybody
who could
get a tube
and an eye
and a winter night.

[Verse 3]
They made you say
the wrong thing
in a room
in Rome.
You said it.
You walked out of the room
and the moons
were still
exactly
where you had left them.

[Outro]
*Io. Europa.
Ganymede. Callisto.*
Still moving
tonight
above the same Padua roof,
and every kid
with a fifty-dollar telescope
in any backyard
on the planet
is still
finding them
in the same order
you found them in,
and you are still
the reason
they know
where to look.

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