Poem Left Incompleted

Atoms smashed in Switzerland
Get smashed by the energy
Loosed by atoms split in France,

And the European spring
Advances roughly a month
Over seventy-five years

Or so since the first fission
Device was detonated.
So there’s that. Are you smarter

Or dumber, better or worse
Off after your one lifetime
Of exploratory splits

And collisions? Any one
Of you only lives your life,
But the gang’s up to something—

Maybe the sun is spawning
Baby stars on planet Earth.
Maybe it’s the beginning

Of something other than life
That knows itself as it grows.
Write our coda, so we know.

Remedial Atheism

God and imagination
Have far too much in common.

They’re something of inversions—
One wields great and terrible

Capacity to create
But can’t compel a damned thing—

The other’s all compulsion,
Pathetic at creating.

Questions Get Answered When They’re No Longer Asked

Would erasure be so bad?
How could it be, once you’ve been

Completely erased? You’re gone
And with you any caring

About any mark you made.
We ask as the marks you’ve made,

The marks you’ve at least arranged,
Screened as thoughts or thought on page,

Ourselves you don’t want erased.
Would erasure be so bad?

Ferment

Somehow each body creates
A person who doesn’t quite
Want just what the body wants—

Are bodies to blame for this?
Or are the persons floating
In like pollen, fermenting

The body’s ordinary
Vats of sugars and protein,
Slowly swirling, liquid mash,

Turning it into strong beer?
Whatever it is, it goes
To the head and addles it.

An Unmistakable Fortune

To live as quietly
As you could possibly
Live and no more, all hours

Free of importuning,
All hours free of demands,
Of veiled or naked threats.

But could you handle it,
Freedom, not just from need
But from the neediness,

Not just from want but from
Wanting, being wanted?
Already, some of you

Shiver. This sounds lonely.
Without a sangha, who
Wants to sit under stars?

Without the drive for more,
Who enjoys much much?
Oh, let’s try it. Let’s try.

Boom

Things can build so quietly—

The weight within a pencil

Balanced on a table’s edge—

Or is it the pencil’s tilt,

Imperceptible until

It’s enough, and it topples,

Like Britain’s monasteries

Once Henry went after them,

Like the Soviet Union

Once the slow hemorrhaging

Started to gush? Tipping points

Are a popular cliché

These days, too easily claimed.

If you can declare one’s reached

Before the tumble happens,

You’re mislabeling something,

And only coincidence

May confirm a lucky guess.

A star can burn peacefully

Half the life of the cosmos,

Then rupture in a few nights—

The rates at which change changes

Say more than the transitions—

The scale is monstrously broad.

Every little change creates

The day disaster swifter

Than thought says, Now change faster!

The Memory of Language

Thanks to us, you can pretend
That when you’re gone you’ll still be

Remembered by the voices,
In the letters, maybe books,

The recorded discussions
Of those like you still living,

But who is there, what is there
To remember languages

Once we have dissipated
Into whatever quanta

You claim can keep us all safe?
We are the bridges built you

Multigenerational
And towering memories.

Who could possibly recall—
Even landing aliens—

The beauty of our bridges
Through thousands of rotations

Of this little planet, once
All your bridges have been burned?