Tyrannical Light

Jasmeen Kanwal

When you think about the fact that 
moonlight is just reflected sunlight, 
when you think about how far that
light has travelled to arrive here, 
pooling coolly on the floorboards of your study,
from the sun 
to the moon,
from the moon 
to you,
the terrifying power of the sun hits the pit of your belly.   

How it finds a way to shine,
even on this dark side,
on every open eye,
every upturned leaf,
every life that crawls,
exposed, on Earth—

even on those nights when 
the moon is in shadow,
reaching us still
via Venus and Mars, even
out past the asteroid belt
to Jupiter and Saturn, then
swiftly back,
to the back of your eye, 
whittled to the wavelengths an alien surface could not absorb

—when you think about this, the inescapability 
of being locked in this solar panopticon,
the blood drains, invisibly, 
from your skin.  

The Science

This poem is about that most fundamental of waves, light. It was written after I first gave proper thought to something I’d long known, but never fully grasped, that the light from the moon and from the other planets in our solar system does not originate in those bodies but is reflected light from the sun. The amount of light reflected (albedo) and its colour (wavelength) can reveal much about the chemical composition of the reflecting surface. The terrifying comprehension of this all-seeing light is countered in the poem by the reminder that, in the dimness of the reflected light and inside the depths of our bodies, some things can still be hidden.

The Poet

Dr Jasmeen Kanwal works at the University of Edinburgh where, among other things, she gets to develop fun STEAM-related activities for schools (STEAM is STEM with ‘Arts’ added in). She has studied physics, philosophy, cognitive science, linguistics, and biology, and loves anything that connects science, art, and language. Recently she’s started writing poetry again after a 20-year hiatus.

Next poem: Wave Energy by Saadiah Freeman