THE PORTENT
Come look, he said, so I stood beside him on the doorstep
in the sharp night air, just as the other people stood,
in pairs and clusters, murmuring on their doorsteps,
and the traffic's red blinks, and feathers of mist
brushed the pavement, where in the morning the earthworms
would lay fainting,
and he pointed into the sky—an invisible line
arced from his outstretched finger
toward the visible past, the candling lives of stellar bodies—
to show me that untethered moon tearing the sky
the way a needle parts the fibers
in its work of mending, the comet dragging
a little light in from the other side—
And I could see
why they had trembled, in the last millennium, when the
long-haired star
crossed their hearts' waters: There's so much
we don't know. For example,
whether the trail of light that marks the comet's
dying shows how we also,
struck loose, are shedding our substance as we go. Maybe
slightly burning.
When I took his arm then, he leaned into me
and I don't know if he was frightened, I don't know
whether he saw that great animate grief above us
is a warning, or whether he took comfort
from momentarily leaning against another
as we hurtle through space. But the neighbors were hushed
under their lamplights, and I could still see
those other figures,
clothed in skins, their few remaining spears
at their feet and their protector
fallen; they stood
heads tilted back, at the edge
of their country, and the sky torn
open: they were holding each other
by the waist and shoulder—for warmth,
and to steady each other
for the walk into the lost field.
— Sharon Kraus
Philosopher Giordano Bruno (1566-1600) asked "What would happen if you put your hand through the surface of the heavens?" For positing that the universe is finite, Bruno was arrested by the Inquisition in Venice, imprisoned for 7 years in Rome, and burned in the public square on February 17, 1600.
I love the dark hours of my being.
My mind deepens into them.
There I can find, as in old letters,
the days of my life, already lived,
and held like a legend,
and understood.
~ Rilke
Love/Life Poems
