The seeing wears away the seer:
twelve years further on Voyager 2 putts
out through the pinball solar
system, past Neptune and beyond the
reach of time. Another day in
the round and the cliche of uneventful
incident has not yet arrived.
The balloon that is so majestic on
the plump air tumbles as heavy
as a plumb-bob onto the countryside,
trailing its fifty seconds of life
huddled to impact. The cattle
scattered, the sky did not change but
released names into the wispy
afternoon. Then all is as it was
before the tragic flight, except
the calm that betokens fear.
And clouds rich as coalmines gathered
from the chutes of mountainsides, over
the belts of grainfield to boost
the corporate climates, and to market
each end of the world gyrally.
A blotting paper sky, the soft
tear of thunder, then lightning. Who
would demand of the wise a word
to steer by? Nostradamus throws his
hands in the air after the event:
Mark well my words, I told you so.
Backward we look upon his bag
of tricks, and with each new calamity
a surreal rabbit lifts before your eyes.
Ribbed streets! Pneumatic heartbeat!
Prophecy is the Art of Boredom
for one who cannot stand his own company
from one moment to the next.
He pulls the hat trick, feigns the
future, argues the task of his breath
wearily on its way. Some ravel
dreams to cats cradles in whose
uninhabited solitude, slowly as a yawn,
wish to pull forth the superstrings.
Call it a living, this space
between meetings. Those encirclements
that bind us together temporally.
The distant applause of rain
and the weekend screaming of a girl.
The screech of a trains brake
as if a fire were being extinguished.
The exiles brain is a frozen, grey
sea-storm; from wave to wave
he stares down the barrel of the moon.
It is morning and the sun spreads
over Nicaragua slow as the slitting
of a throat. Consider Ernesto Cardinal
as he rises from his bed, how
he stacks his images practical as planks.
Ay, the roses blood dark as diesel!