Vast

for Barbara Hepworth

How did you know
before you reached inside and opened it,
the surfaces within a solid sphere would be 
                                            so vast
that light would brush their grain like fingertips
and never die?

How did you know
the only place to tilt and tap the blade;
how did you dare to make 
the first – the final – cut? 

How did you know 
what we did not –
and would not, still: 
our fear of seeing space unfolding endlessly?


First published in Pennine Platform no. 84 and The Ekphrastic Review