Prologue to a Text
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Prologue to a Text Clare Rossini We humans once lived in the moment, The moment being all there was. Stuffing our mouths With berries, we collapsed on the ground to make An early forerunner of love. Then wind Brought the stink of a predator's haunch, panic Ensuing. How divine it must have seemed When, at last, we had time to ponder clouds As they built their chateaus. Grunts into words, Words into the updraft of questions -- A miracle to carry the world On the tongue: "world." Even the heart at last Consigning itself to syllables: Ah, thee.... The numbers tidying things up, the numbers Knitting things to equations, the theorems Proposing, revising, secreting, each Tool-in-theory awaiting our genius, Our heartache, until damp and wood-colored, This morning dawned, the smell of burning leaves Drifting across my sepia mood, Every doorway in the house yawning empty. You, elsewhere, lift a screen in the air (Got it!) Then send an image toward the chill Draughts of space. It flickers through a satellite, free- Falls back to the planet -- Let's pause for a moment, behold earth Cloud-swaddled, gamboling around our star.... Somewhere in New Jersey, a tower corrals Your cache of photons, beams them on To the privacy of my circuits, which are roused By your elation: Check out this sunset, Love! A finger to the warm flesh of glass, And my screen goes bronze with a Roman dusk. |
