Satellite, and: Dreams, and: Dreams (2) Dan Chiasson (bio) Satellite 1 Sitting in a swivel chair, high up above the Sound, he found anold book by Jules Verne on the study shelves, From the Earth to theMoon, and spent the long morning reading. 2 If you want to make it to the moon,Not halfway, all the way,If you want to seeThe tininess of your obsessions, Loyalty, etcetera, a speck,Not halfway, all the way,If you want to seeLove as a perspectival trick, Worthwhile, worthless, what you lovedAll the way, not halfwayA triviality,Then mind what name your master gave. [End Page 323] Bobbing lifelessly beside the story,Halfway, not all the way,You stand for [ ] 3 The blank kept getting filled in and deleted. The word that workedbest was “poetry,” which he associated with transitions and transactions,rather than settled points of arrival and departure. But the dogwas a symbol for much more than poetry, unless poetry itself was asymbol for something far greater than itself. He wrote, “The Jules Verne poem is about a voyage to the moonwhere a mascot ominously named ‘Satellite’ is found dead on boardthe capsule, its body dumped into space and forgotten, until the endof the tale, when poor Satellite is discovered to have loyally accompaniedthe capsule, bobbing up and down in space, all the way toits destination, the moon.” 4 The final line, he said, would be “The neither-here-nor-there thatbuoyed me.” [End Page 324] Dreams 1 The mountains around him opened in great flashing crevasses andout poured men and women by the hundreds, smiling and laughing;he was a monitoring eagle seeing life from all angles. Then he was the one seen, like a monitoring eagle glimpsed in thetrees, a rare and beautiful symbol. Then again he was the eagle’s eye, hidden in the deep branches ofa pine, far above, an eye that understood everything. 2 the rock face launched from its chasms bright orange skiersauroras flashed then drifted the skiers were crepe paper the mountain had a mouth and it ate passing airplanesthe conscience of the Adirondacks is the sandwort is the tundra yew a volley of clouds whipped past the trees and over the valleywhere Mount Mansfield was ready with its down the line return [End Page 325] and the mountains played forever this way, volleying to and frofronts and storms as though nobody ever planned a party or long weekend and you could make them vanish and you could make them bashfuland the skiers ran like tears and the clouds volleyed were volleyed Whiteface to Mt. Philo to the Gothics 3 Then he was the one seen, his body aged, and all the onlookersremarked upon his aging body, the muscles in his arms slackening,his posture stooped. And the men and women turned away sadly, for this sight, thiscommon sight they had seen before. [End Page 326] Dreams (2) 1 . . . and then again he was an eagle, hidden away in the branches,but rare, a rare sight, so liable to be seen. And his eagle mind now regarded his aging body with pity, since it,and not his mind, was what people saw. And they saw it every time he scaled the pines, intending to lookout as from behind a shield of invisibility. 2 What happened to Hibbing, Minnesota, they asked Dylan.And Dylan replied: just time. Time is what happened to Hibbing. Imagine outlasting time, appearing on the other sideof it, relieved, like Wow What Was That All About: A dream, I had the most horrible dream, spoke the shepherd;And the lass replied: no matter now, we’re here now, quiet, love. [End Page 327] 3 Since he was an eagle, he would be seen, and since he was not aneagle, what people would see was his body, slowly becoming a bodyhe did not wish others to see. [End Page 328] Dan Chiasson Dan Chiasson is the author of five books, including, most recently, the poetry collection Bicentennial. He teaches at Wellesley College...
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May 30, 2024
Yadurshana Sivashankar + 3
Open Access