This is the story of five millennia of 'head-scratching' - of how humans have tried to make sense of the cosmos. From mankind's ancestors staggering out of Africa two million-odd years ago, to Professor Stephen Hawking and his A Brief History of Time, James Muirden's wonderful new poem cleverly and humorously examines the quest for understanding of our universe. Here are the theories, discoveries, writings and sayings of Aristotle, Plato and Pythagoras, Ptolemy and the Arab astronomers and mathematicians who flourished during Europe's Dark Ages, Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Boyle, and many more, by way of Herschel and Einstein and so to the present day. Wonderfully funny and extremely clever, The Cosmic Verses instructs and clarifies even as it amuses.