Love can make you ask funny questions now and then.

Who puts the rainbow in the sky?

Who lights the stars at night?

 

Questions we, and all those who have gone before us, and all those who follow after us, will ask as long as we live.

Ptolemy and Herschel and Hipparchus looking up into the heavens observed, recorded and wondered.

Kepler and Tycho Brahe and Copernicus pursued the same quest.

Eratosthenes and Messier and Hubble were fellow seekers.

As was Galileo.

Looking up, we can be sure all of them sighed and sometimes cried because though the stars are fixed in the sky the course of love, as we all know to our cost, is always erratic.

Ah, what is the stars? What is the stars?

Mansions built by Nature’s hand.

Dome and vault and nest.

Steadfast watchers of the moving waters and the snow upon the mountains and moors.

Light streaming.

Light Years. Light Years. Light Years.

Dropping silently, thick as stones, into the picket of trees.

Catch a falling star and teach me to hear the mermaids singing.

Look at the stars!

Look, look up at the skies!

O look at all the fire folk!

Circle citadels.

Diamond delves.

Airy abeles aflare.

Borrow a bonnet of the Lark and a Chamois’ silver boot and go.

The heart leaps beholding the rainbow in the sky.

A perfectly ordinary rainbow.

The morning stars sang together.

Signs in the Sun and in the moon and in the stars.

Seven stars in the right hand.

A crown of twelve stars.

Love can make you ask some funny questions now and then.

Who dreamt up someone so divine – someone like you and made them mine?

Lonely, unhappy, lips as cold as ice but you kissed me and good heavens!

No more a dark and distant star.

Now I’m here in Paradise.

Paradise.

Who put the rainbow in the sky?

Who lights the stars at night.

 

Galileo (Someone Like You) – a divine song written by Declan O’Rourke and Seamus Cotter.

Sung by Declan, on his debut Album, with innocent assurance.

The assurance of someone who sounds a true note.

Galileo will always be the signature song of Declan’s career though he has subsequently written and recorded many very fine songs.

When he recorded it in 2004 he thought that the song was an indulgence and that nobody outside him and his family would be interested.

Yet, when people heard this song there was an immediate sigh of recognition.

For, who has not looked up and wondered who put the rainbow in the sky?

Who has not wondered who lights the stars at night?

Who has not been lonely and unhappy with lips as cold as ice?

And, good heavens, who has not, even once, for once is all it takes, been kissed and found themselves in paradise?

Who invented such a joy?

Who has not wondered then who dreamt up someone so divine and made them mine?

So don’t be blind and don’t cry.

Look up high and gladly sigh.

Eddi Reader, as true and fair a voice as you can ever hope to find, lights up the heavens here accompanied by the RTE Concert Orchestra.

Look up and gladly sigh.

Look at the stars!

Look, look up at the skies!

O look at all the fire folk!

Don’t be blind and don’t you cry.

Look up high and gladly sigh,

And you might find you’re in Paradise.

Love can make you ask some funny questions now and then.

Who puts the rainbow in the sky?

Who lights the stars at night?

We will all have a blind and dying day.

Until then …

Look up high and sigh and be thankful.

 

Notes :

I highly recommend all of Declan’s recorded output :

‘Since Kyabram’, ‘Big Bad Beautiful World’ ‘Mag Pai Zai’, ‘Gold Bars in the Sun’, ‘In Full Colour’ and ‘Chronicles of the Great Irish Famine’.

Declan has an informative website declanorourke.com which features a fascinating documentary revisiting the making of his debut Album.

Paul Weller said about Declan :

‘He writes the sort of classic songs that people don’t write anymore, songs that sound like they’ve been around forever. Listen to Galileo, which is possibly the greatest song written in the last thirty years.’

Galileo has been recorded by Eddi Reader, Mary Byrne and Josh Groban among others.

There is a stunning version by Camille O’Sullivan which I will feature when I write a Post with her as the subject later this year.

Credit for starry inspiration properly due to :

William Wordsworth, John Keats, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Emily Dickinson, Les Murray (RIP), Sylvia Plath and The King James Bible.