Just for a Moment
If the world stopped for a moment,
I could sit,
listen to the silence that becomes,
watch how
a river stops flowing,
how the trees congeal into motionlessness.
If the world stopped for a moment,
and I with it?
I would not see
flowering meadows,
where a river becomes just a line,
and the still trees
look like sculptures,
I would not hear the ubiquitous silence.
If the world stopped
even for one day
then people –
could not hurt people.
-- tr Artur Komoter
Scenographia Systematis Mvndani Ptolemaici (Scenography of the Ptolemaic cosmography) -- Andreas Cellarius
Klaudios Ptolemaios was a 2nd-century astronomer in Alexandria. His "Mathematike Syntaxis" (Mathematical Treatise, known as the "Almagest" -- "Almagestum" was a 12th-century Latin re-translatiion of the Arabic "al-Majisti"; the original Greek version would not be rediscovered until the 15th century) detailed a universe in which the stars and planets revolved around a motionless Earth. Ina later work he developed the notion that each planet moves on a small circle, called an epicycle, that moved on a larger one called a deferent. In 1660 Andreas Cellarius published "Harmonia Macrocosmica," which contained illustrations of various planetary theories, including the Ptolemaic conception.
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