The Flammarion Engraving

 

The Milky Way is stone and silent fire,

Flying ice and dust, and expanding gas,

But what we find within the heliosphere

Suggests a whilom laboratory

Where the essential elements were cast

And the residues made preparatory

For the distillation that's planet Earth:

Europa's water, Io's sulfur,

Gases from Saturn and Jupiter,

Engineered for the terrestrial birth.

The traveler sees, beyond a starry veil,

Cosmic clockwork, eternal music.

Kneeling, he lifts a hand as if to hail

His Maker, the tinkering mechanic.

Rock

Even the soft are hard,

The boulder or the shard;

The pebble or stone, all scarred

With the stylus and the cloth

And the wings of the moth.

Still up the mountains thrust

Into skies of water and dust,

Then crumble at last to sand,

Until the flatness of the land

Betrays no fleck of bone,

Nor relic of brick or stone,

And no one left to be alone.

Orchestra

Musicians are made of music,

As though there exists a music gene.

For accomplished artists, it's no trick,

But benefit of exquisite training.

You feel the presence of votive force.

The notes, even the shaping of line,

Are pleasing, like a poem's off-rhyme,

But talent, not music, is their source.

The players make of air a force

That governs the fluidity of time.

They understand that beauty is fleeting,

That this song, now, is their only chance,

That perfection seldom knows repeating,

And thrust at our hearts like a lance.

Melody

The orchestra is silent,

No vibrating instrument,

Nor air, sweet or dissonant.

The players left the stage

Striking one note — of rage.

An object of odium,

The conductor sits the podium.

The composer’s score,

Scattered on the floor,

Will not be heard anymore.

Hate

A black and bloody flower

Blooms in the hearts’ bower,

Its scent poisoning the hour.

Its thorns, proliferating pain,

Stab the heart again and again.

Words wound us without stint,

Hot soughing winds by dint

Of battering the heart’s cage —

Like a billion moths of rage

Demanding the end of the age.

Insomnia

I wake at two. The dreams rewind.

The day now past is redefined,

Its cracked and slipping gears grind.

Remembering will not bring sleep

And to hell with counting sheep.

Getting up to read only prolongs

Alertness — as do regretted wrongs.

You try to empty out all thought,

But find what’s unwillingly sought;

What can be quickly flung away

Returns in images you cannot say.

Soon you’re even more woke up,

Like an overflowing coffee cup.

You change the me from you to I —

That’s worse, like the grasping “my.”

Take all these memories and desires

And drown them in oceanic fires.

Breathe deep until thought expires.

Number

The number of dates

Ever proliferates.

Each, pinned down, waits

Until all are done —

One and one and one.

We wake and sleep and wake

Without the slightest break

In the dropped mirror

Of each memory’s error.

I remember tomorrow,

Waves of it, row on row,

Just within my reach

On this particulate beach

That myriad suns bleach.