Imagine one day you were in a coccoon,
You were going to lose your mind You so terrified you sweated, You saw, but you were blind, And then, the brown twig, every Nerve coursing through you, The cloud, the earth, a wind, The blazing of yellow white through Thin leaves, a sweep of love, A reverberation without an end, A beetle the color of coral red, You cease, the chirping, the bramble blend.
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The light itself, the way
It rises from the Ground Of Everything, isn’t made, Doesn’t make, whereas we are bound In knots of thoughts. To talk Of cause and effect in The—eh?—beyond our thoughts Is a no-plane in a tailspin. But once we have established Our base upon the bight, We see mirrored in the glass The blue waves, the scudded white, And we indeed rise to where Everything is hidden, has a glow From a light that has no end Reflected on us in the tender snow. Here is a light. It shines on--
No, it shines in, or through, or With, or carries the valise of Every atom through the corridor. The nurse feeds, the teacher engages, The nanny folds the sheets, Mother holds their hands, father Tells them stand in line, the streets Are filled with them, filing along, There is no nurse or teacher, nanny, Mother or father, only a sun Or moon blurry, uncanny, But not them either, because The light is there, but—here-- But—at any rate, it blazes Or simmers into dimness, mere Smokiness, as you twiddle with The knob: and let the current flow, Walk into the office, strike The desk. “This is to let you know: “The trucks will travel the straightest Route, we’ll employ a clean accountant, The computers will zip, the ionized Air will clear the mood of the diffident.” And the continent with lines of light Will shine from mountain to shore, The possum will trace its way, And silence will soak the sycamore. Let’s dive into the magic
Of this world, let’s ignore The skyscrapers, the enchanting Wide-winged hawks, the door Is open to a chaos in which The roads have been snatched away, And sky and land flee each other, And the sea recedes from the bay. This script it has a cosmic ring
It appears in the heron’s eyes, It stitches together sea and sky, In the same way that it first entered size And form, as it came from the hidden Box, that was not a box, that floated Before the unseen source, 2,000 years Before any atom was denoted, It is the secret of space, it Describes the curve of force, It is the terminal, it comes To Grand Central Station, it is the morse Code that tells the time, that signifies The schedule, the tracks through Blinding snow, the wind that lifts The driving sheets of flakes, the clue To a greater script that is no script But infinitely winds and is no Road, a silent, white hot burst, A secret galaxy, a silent echo of vertigo. It is all quite remarkable. Your hand
Moves and the air responds. The air Moves it is your hand. The ants Crawl in a line, and the celestial Bear Circles above the wind. And the forest Blesses you, the snow sifting through The trees. The silence, almost silence, The shadows black, almost blue, A silence birthing silence, a season Birthing years, a dizzying night, Car lights red and white, and The secrets of an iron-nickel meteorite. You see every brick, you see the traces
Of the men who brought the bricks, of the men Who laid them, of the men who paid for them, You see the clay and shale flaking when A forest once stood here, your senses Sense what cannot be sensed, they are Brilliant, they trace the invisible tale, The celebration, the memoir Of the source of the source. Antibodies Run through your veins, enzymes Until you tingle, your feet feel The layers of the earth, all times Are merely a map, until You are the locus of the planet, Until you are the seed of the seed, The red that suffuses the pomegranate. It is everything. It is
The swinging of the planet, it is Its faith in its track, it is The churning foam of space, the fizz Of rules that point at everywhere Invisible, the spring of being And the dancing quark, and how They bend together, blend, agreeing With a will that generates A cubic inch of space, some light Or dark matter, some hydrogen, Amino acid riding on the night Side of some misshapen rock, And every asteroid finds its place, The island universe, each blur A galaxy, spinning in its space. The stream no longer feeds the pool
The rain does not fall the lightning Has ceased, the whole forest is black, The land is dim, the birds don’t sing At dawn, the rats overrun the field, The beavers are confused, they do not Build, eggs do not hatch, vines Pull down trees, the mushrooms rot, Lead leaches into the water, animals Stagger, a man comes along, understands Nothing, stamps his feet, waves His spear, curses, waves his hands, Lives on mushrooms, rips bark From the trees, throws it to The ground, a wildcat snarls, Lopes into the woods, through The mud, but those who were driven away Will return, the hostile tribes decay, Then, in the light of a returning sun I shall speak and tell the night and the day. Far, far from the light of the sun,
In the rainforest, the spider Eyes gleam, the bird is devoured, The raindrops splash beside her, The men walk in the dark, The night blackness roll and swell, Fear, trembling, lifted spears, And rage that nothing can dispel, The slipper orchid is devoured, The coati half-eaten at its lair, The liana vines choke the tree, The curare dangles in the air, Everything is black, lumps, Mistaken trees, deviant limbs, Sizzling rage and shame, The air gray, the universe dims, And the flower that smells like rotted flesh Crouches on the fallen tree. The kapok and the harpy eagle Rise clear above the canopy. |
Yaacov David Shulman
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