MM.11:127BARBARA F. LEFCOWITZ
Quasars
“Astronomers who have found the most distant object ever detected
said they could break their record in days. . .”
--New York Times, 4/16/00
Dim but red enough to singe
the first darkness to follow the Bang
each day another blaze of dust appears
at a distance more vast from the lens
than any revealed before:
Such news at first reminds me
of a city's pre-dawn lamps, invisible
hands clicking them on one by one
to create glass boxes of light
that join the few always shining
from rooms of the frail, the frightened,
the legions of night-readers.
But such a scene, though suitable
for painters of skylines and Hopper-
esque poets, has no more to do with a quasar
than myths about the history of fire.
Reluctantly I realize that these stars
that are not really stars, compare
with nothing at all; these anti-metaphors
that make each day's new measure
of spacetime at once obsolete.
And if such dim fragments
of faraway fire never stop showing
so we never know when and where
the matter began
but only that it did?
I can only assume any absolutely
brilliant all-at-once revelation
would not only sear the human eye, its
sharpest most sensitive lenses, but
bring on a second darkness, more solid
yet more elusive, enduring far longer
than that which followed the Bang.
Poem, © 2000, BARBARA F. LEFCOWITZ
(all rights reserved; To copy or translate this poem, please contact the poet)
Site design, © 2000, John Horvath Jr., PoetryRepairShop. and www.poetryrepairs.com
(All Rights Reserved).
TRANSLATOR and/or ILLUSTRATOR WANTED FOR THIS PAGE
|
Parts Poet ADS FORUM GUESTBOOK HOME 2001.01 RATE US REFER US SiteSEARCH SUBMIT |
Issues MM01 MM02 MM03 MM04 MM05 MM06 MM07 MM08 MM09 MM10 MM11 MM12 |
Pages 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 |
|
PoetryRepairShop 
|
