Poems about the James Webb Space Telescope

In Competition No. 3261, you were invited to submit a poem about the James Webb Space Telescope.

The first dazzling images captured by its infrared eyes were a welcome antidote to our terrestrial woes. They brought to mind the moment in the film Contact when Jodie Foster’s character comes face to face with a celestial object for the first time and says: ‘They should have sent a poet.’

So, it’s over to you. An honourable mention to Bruce Bennett; the winners below snaffle £25 each.

Much have I travelled in the realms of space Past supergiants and dying galaxies, With floating rubble tossed on cosmic seas A million miles from Earth’s familiar face. A watcher of the skies, I can record The birth of dust-enshrouded stars, long dead; Imploding voids on which black holes have fed Behind celestial borders, unexplored. Time-travelling, I shall complete my task, Revealing scenes beyond imagination To catch the first birth-pangs of our creation – A triumph for the team. And yet I ask:       An image of the ancient past unfolds       But who can picture what the future holds?. Sylvia Fairley

In the deep and trackless spaces wait the fragments of a Bang: the Universe goes through its paces,       free from sturm, devoid of drang puts its best face forward, smiling,       lolls in sheen and unseen light, welcomes – oh it is beguiling! – this paparazzo neophyte: hanging in a distant orbit,       unfolding its beryllium lens. To capture time, it must absorb it,       show us what the past intends: watching nebulae reverse       and galaxies in utero – it blinks, a cosmic sphinx, immersed       in how the dusty clusters grow. Bill Greenwell

The telescopic kite-shaped wonder stealing Hubble’s cosmic thunder Launched and sailed without a blunder or a flaw, And now its gilded mirrors lumine vivid nebulae no human, Stegosaurus or ichneumon ever saw.   With pioneering engineering, after endless persevering, Homo sapiens is peering back in time At swirling galaxies that traffic through the void; the spectrographic Simulacra are seraphic and sublime.