Seeing Is Believing

Century after century we saw
with our own eyes the sun
and moon and stars wheel
east to west over a stationary earth.
Later the Church endorsed our eyes.
God had set all in place, the Bible said,
four thousand years before the birth of Christ.

But by his telescope, his science,
and a leap of mind, it came to Galileo
Earth was a moving sphere
spinning from west to east,
circling each year in Space
with fellow planets round the sun,
itself a ball of fire.

Clearly the man was mad.
But men have travelled now
in Space, seen for themselves,
just as the madman said,
the shining, pale blue ball of Earth
spinning, with other planets,
and the moon playing Ring–a–Roses
round its parent Earth.
Yet still our stubborn eyes declare
it is the sun that moves.