Читать книгу Nature Speaks - Дебора Кеннеди - Страница 24

About Double Vision

This poem juxtaposes two experiences separated by twenty years and six thousand miles. The first was visiting the Pantheon, one of the best preserved ancient Roman temples. The interior of this remarkable concrete building is an almost perfect sphere one hundred and forty-three-feet-high and wide. The curving walls lead up to an oculus, or twenty-seven-foot-wide circular opening, at the top of the dome. Oculus means “eye” in Latin, and this opening acts almost like an eye’s pupil, creating an opening to the sky and bringing dramatic shafts of light into the interior. The second experience was seeing a full moon ringed by a glowing ice halo. These halos form when cirrus clouds spread thin layers of ice crystals high up in the atmosphere where they reflect the moonlight. Enthralling visions like moon-bows and ice halos often hover above us, but they are less frequently seen in a world dazzled by millions of moving screens. The drawing is an interior view of the Pantheon, light streaming through its oculus.