Photo by David Dibert
Call and Response
(in gratitude to Le Guin, Rilke, Yeats)
Maria Berardi
1.
The moon’s luminescence softens everything,
allows different things to be noticed
than those seen in daytime’s simple light.
The moon is nothing but Earth’s stillborn child,
endlessly bound, hopelessly bound,
its glow not power, just reflection.
We are atoms bound briefly,
we are not solid,
nothing is solid. Nor safe.
We are just carrying out our programs.
It is all quite
overdetermined.
What we experience
as mind is just brain.
The heart is just a pump.
I am stuck in this like everyone else,
I reach, I reason, stutter, stammer, stop.
I never do know perfect silence.
2.
Why is there all of this, instead of nothing?
The universe is an answer without a question.
Praise the darkness, and creation unfinished.
Why is there wonder, and not just blind drive?
Try to love the questions themselves.
There is all of this, and not just nothing,
the not-quite-silence is where
the answers come from,
not solutions, answers:
it appears to be a conversation of sorts,
as the answer to assertion is another question,
as the answer to music is dance.
(in gratitude to Le Guin, Rilke, Yeats)
Maria Berardi
1.
The moon’s luminescence softens everything,
allows different things to be noticed
than those seen in daytime’s simple light.
The moon is nothing but Earth’s stillborn child,
endlessly bound, hopelessly bound,
its glow not power, just reflection.
We are atoms bound briefly,
we are not solid,
nothing is solid. Nor safe.
We are just carrying out our programs.
It is all quite
overdetermined.
What we experience
as mind is just brain.
The heart is just a pump.
I am stuck in this like everyone else,
I reach, I reason, stutter, stammer, stop.
I never do know perfect silence.
2.
Why is there all of this, instead of nothing?
The universe is an answer without a question.
Praise the darkness, and creation unfinished.
Why is there wonder, and not just blind drive?
Try to love the questions themselves.
There is all of this, and not just nothing,
the not-quite-silence is where
the answers come from,
not solutions, answers:
it appears to be a conversation of sorts,
as the answer to assertion is another question,
as the answer to music is dance.