What the Stars Meant

Abstract

On a backwards-running clock in Lisbon, By the marble statue of Pessoa; On an antique astrolabe in London Tracing out the sky above Samoa, Thousands of miles away-in time, in place, Each night conspires to create a myth That stands for nothing real, yet leaves you with vague impression of a human face. fragments fly apart and shift, trembling On the threshold of a kind of fullness: minor wonder of remembering; greater wonders of forgetfulness. For one looks back as someone else might yearn For a new life, and set his course upon polestar, bid his adieus, and move on. journey takes a solipsistic turn, Forsaking starlight for an inner glow, And reducing all human history, All human culture-highbrow, middle, low -- To one reflecting surface, one story. What fills the heaven of a single mind? things that used to fill Kant's mind with awe - The starry heavens and the moral law -- Seem distant now, and difficult to find Amid the message of satiety Issuing from the corners of the sky, Filled with monotonous variety: Game shows, an interview with Princess Di, And happy talk, and sitcoms and the news, shit that floats across your living room Each weekday evening. Waiting in the pews, Out in the desert where the cacti bloom, Something else was forming, something stranger Gathering in the gulf below the stairs -- As though the mystery of the manger Were written in the day-to-day affairs Of a world consecrated to Mammon, Yet governed by those sacred absences That make the spirit soar, and presences At one remove, like the sound of Cuban Drumbeats issuing from the Ricardos' Love-nest on the television station Like distant thunder; or Leonardo's Wave that flees the site of its creation. In the desert far beyond the city, One hears the cadences for which one longs, lyrics of those half-forgotten songs, - Some of them poignant, some of them witty -- Brimming with the melody of passage; One feels the wind that blows the soul about, Repeating its inscrutable message; And as night falls, one sees the stars come out. …