From the Space Sonnets

I would like you to walk into a science fiction painting. There is a huge monastery at its center, built around a gigantic telescope. The road you are on approaches the monastery, then skirts it to continue into the hills beyond. Monks dressed in brown cowls are working the fields. Off to the right begin woodlands. Listen carefully and you can hear the sounds of twinning waterfalls.

Now the painting darkens and you are approaching a small wooden cabin beside the monastery. Inside, a young man is bent over a wooden table, writing. In the half loft above, his wife and children sleep. Once in a while he glances up, quill pen poised before his lips, to look out at the monastery walls or the broken time machine that lies nearby.