Skip to main content

Celestial Music

Louise Gluck

I have a friend who still believes in heaven.
Not a stupid person, yet with all she knows, she literally talks
to god,
she thinks someone listens in heaven.
On earth, she's unusually competent.
Brave, too, able to face unpleasantness.

We found a caterpillar dying in the dirt, greedy ants crawling
over it.
I'm always moved by weakness, by disaster, always eager to
oppose vitality.
But timid, also, quick to shut my eyes.
Whereas my friend was able to watch, to let events play out
according to nature. For my sake, she intervened,
brushing a few ants off the torn thing, and set it down across
the road.

My friend says I shut my eyes to god, that nothing else
explains
my aversion to reality. She says I'm like the child who buries
her head in the pillow
so as not to see, the child who tells herself
that light causes sadness—
My friend is like the mother. Patient, urging me
to wake up an adult like herself, a courageous person—

In my dreams, my friend reproaches me. We're walking
on the same road, except it's winter now;
she's telling me that when you love the world you hear celestial
music:
look up, she says. When I look up, nothing.
Only clouds, snow, a white business in the trees
like brides leaping to a great height—
Then I'm afraid for her; I see her
caught in a net deliberately cast over the earth—

In reality, we sit by the side of the road, watching the sun set;
from time to time, the silence pierced by a birdcall.
It's this moment we're both trying to explain, the fact
that we're at ease with death, with solitude.
My friend draws a circle in the dirt; inside, the caterpillar
doesn't move.
She's always trying to make something whole, something
beautiful, an image
capable of life apart from her.
We're very quiet. It's peaceful sitting here, not speaking, the
composition
fixed, the road turning suddenly dark, the air
going cool, here and there the rocks shining and glittering—
it's this stillness that we both love.
The love of form is a love of endings.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

MICE at Apsara Angkor Resort and Conference Center

Photo: Standard room; bath MICE stands for Meetings, Incentives, Conventions and Exhibitions. It’s an important industry because  MICE  visitors are usually on business and often spend more than leisure travelers. Meetings, incentives, conferences, and exhibitions, or Meetings, Incentives, Conferences, and Events (MICE) is a type of tourism in which large groups, usually planned well in advance, are brought together for a particular purpose. Meeting  – Is a general term indicating the coming together of a number of people in one place, to confer or carry out a particular activity.  Incentive  – Meeting event as part of a programme which is offered to its participants to reward a previous performance. Conference  – Participatory meeting designed for discussion, fact-finding, problem solving and consultation. As compared with a congress, a conference is normally smaller in scale and more select in character – features which tend to ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Cause and Effect

It's because the earth continues to wobble on its axis that we continue to stumble down the streets of the heart. It's because of the loneliness of the first cell trying to swim through its primordial pool that we are filled with a kind of galactic fear. For example: one moment a rocket falls capriciously into a square. Another moment, a rogue wave turns over the fishing boat whose crew leaves their memories floating like an oil slick that never reaches shore. In this way we understand our dying loves scratching at the door. In this way, each love creates its own theory of pain. Each love gnaws the derelict hours to the bone. But because there are so many blank spaces in history we still have time to write our own story. Wittgenstein said our words have replaced our emotions. He never understood how we have to cleanse ourselves of these invisible parasites of doubt and fear. We might as well worry about the signals from dead worlds wandering around the universe forever. Think i...
1 comment
Read more

Phrases for Public Speakers at Sea

by M. B. Powell We ought, first of all, to note her oceanic eyes flecked with sea wrack. And we should pause to consider the wavy wilderness of her damp hair. I will not dwell on her cheeks ruddy under my thumbstrokes. I will not attempt to explain the shapely abalone shells of her ears. I wish to call your attention to the cunning animal of her mouth, muscular. I wish to say something about the mollusky dark language of her kisses. I am obliged to mention her sudden breasts, breaching, rhythmic. And I am perfectly astounded at her finger charting my lips round her nipple. Here, in this connection, let us notice her nipple against the roof of my mouth. Here, in passing, let us observe ...
2 comments
Read more