Monday, July 29, 2024

The Universe and Other Things

Nebula drift and Jupiter spin,
the Eiffel Tower reduced to a pin
affixing a doctor’s appointment to bulletin cork—

everything’s blended in geometry’s torque.
No longer mortal or venial sin,
only a day in the life in run-of-the-mill.

Broken hearts rush down a fire escape,
then dash madly to find lascivious lovers
to the third power who will kiss and tell

the odyssey of dancing on the small of the back
with fingers that know the teasing tarantella well.
Have you tried the absent leaning on a windowsill?

Everything is careening in the tumultuous now.
The future is spinning on the eternal roulette
while the past is world-weary from the blade of a plow.

Sing to this trumpeting or pluck the lute
as you would a lover to make music unmute.
Margaret’s not grieving the dead poet’s unleaving,

for the great bang and whistle-stop is spilling champagne
from magnums onto the fantail, fruited, alluvial plain.
I am in love with love, with the girl on the street

who has given me her address with a wink of the eye.
It is after the Flood and long after Eve.
Who cannot revel in ivy carving veins in the stone,

in the Medieval joust, in the court jester’s grin?
I swear by the Southern Cross now riding the sky
that everything is saved, that everything is right.

It is unnecessary to divide concrete this from arbitrary that.
All is pure potential, realized or not, Brahma’s self-revelation
rising from the well of a magician’s hat.

~William Hammett


Site Map

No comments:

Post a Comment