26 may 2024

26 may 2024

John Bjarne Grover

The most distant planet is Pluto - it takes nearly 250 years to go around the sun. One sees in this 2015 photo

the outlines of 'Gretchen am Spinnrade' - here in Wang's interpretation of the Schubert/Liszt version.

27 may 2024:

Pluto takes appr. 248 years to orbit the sun. According to this web page, one year on Pluto is 247,94 Earth years, or 90560 Earth days. Assuming that it is 90560 days and that an Earth year is 365,2425 days, it means that a Pluto year is 247,94485855 tellurian years. My PEB is 366 poems which cover one year exactly. This means that Pluto will run through the PEB 247 times and then reach the full year at 0,94485855 through. 0,94485855 * 366 = 345,8182 which is 0,8182 * 14 lines = line 11,46 through PEB #346:

PEB #346

It was in the city of Wien.
A female waited by a door.
She stood in front of the scene
while time passed more and more.

Then came another one walking.
Her jacket was white as snow.
She opened the door without talking
and stood there smiling hello.

This scene is seen in its folly
- she waits for the other to enter -
by a man who lowers his brolly.

And each will come and each come near
and Batterfield knows it's winter.
A fly buzzes close to my ear.

Interestingly, it is possible to recognize the main elements in this poem in the geography of Pluto and its moon Charon.

This page presents a good image of Pluto which I annotated for showing the first 4+4 lines of the poem:

(source)
(source)

The next three lines tell of somebody who watches the two females while he is lowering his brolly. That is found on Pluto's moon 'Charon'. This page presents some very interesting images, including Charon:

(source)
(source)

Finally, who are Batterfield and the poet's ear with a fly? The same page presents a detail from the landscape on Pluto which could be suggestive - although this would be rather coincidental if the detail is small:

(source)
(source)