"Book 4.
We wonder at bees' ability to communicate.
We observe the hive, which seems, in turn, to survey us
from another world, as if the inhabitants
of Venus gazed down upon us.
Nowadays, we accept bees do not move in the same world as us.
Contemporary science itemizes their algorithms
and translates the spirit of the hive into instinct.
Reasoned analysis predicts the collapse
of their cooperative societies is imminent.
We share the bees' disastrous forecast.
Space preserves the indelible trace of the bees' graven print
as a capsule of light.
But what of prophecy now and the madness of honey?
When and how do we go beyond what we know?
Who is the seer?
Who is the stranger adrift in the house?
Whose head beat-beat-beats against the windowpane?
Ours is the oracle that sets off a buzz in our pocket.
Ours the speaker who prophesies, instructing
our movements in a monotonous voice from the dashboard.
Ours the antenna that dips into the data stream
for reassurance.
Our oracles broadcast from arboreal masts hung
with rich clusters of antenna.
Through that first darkness, which is always with us,
to the distant vessels that turn in strict circles,
like the loyal geese that are said to wheel around
and around the lost Atlantis.
Satellites tune us to the honeydew of invisible signals,
delivering the influx of information, skyfallen words,
and the rush of ceaseless communication.
Just as the bees change their flight path
with each new tree that comes into bloom, so the nav stars
blink, blink, blink in connective silence,
swimming the eccentric lines of their birdcage orbits.
The vespertinal vessels hide and reveal themselves
as they reveal and hide the globe's surface.
The 12 helical antennae broadcast a cosmic signal band
in a broad cone, modulating the digits of mass communication
in a cipher tide of binary code.
The oracle is a complex instrument,
enforcing a totalizing knowledge, an earthly truth
that we may access not by right, only as a privilege.
The temple at Delphi is twinned with Schriever Air Force
Base, Denver, one signal designated for civilian use,
a more accurate encryption controlled by the US military,
masters of truth.
SPS, I know where I am.
PPS, we know where you are.
Rockets propel us far beyond ourselves
to spy the planet through a vacuum
and plot the globe with constant precision.
Satellites triangulate the mesh of their optimal positions
by ephemeris and the continuous recalculations
of atomic clocks, beaming their blanket
of signals over the entire disk of the listening Earth."