I could be worse employed Than as a watcher of the void Whose part should be to tell What star if any fell I saw four shooting stars tonight. Lying on the grass in my back garden I was wondering why I know so few constellations and so little about the universe. The thought used to be truly comforting. That however huge and important we think our lives are, there are things a hundred times older than we will ever be, and which will keep burning a hundred times longer. And we can see them only as one fleeting after-image of a life that may be already extinguished. I've sat under the stars with a friend and talked the world to rights. I've watched a starry sky turn into a sunrise over the sea, and heard a thousand strangers cheer the setting sun and the emerging moon. A kind of paganism seems built in. It's the part of us that swears at the rain even though all we're really talking to are bags of water hanging in...