The Greatest Grandeur
Some say it’s inthe reptilian dance
of the purple-tongued
sand goanna,
for there the
magnificent translation
of tenacity into bone and grace occurs.
And some declare it to be an expansivedesert — solid rust- orange rock
like dusk captured on earth in stone —simply for the perfect contrast it provides
to the blue-grey ridge of rain
in the distant hills.
Some claim the harmonics of shiftingelectron rings to be most rare and some
the complex motion of seven sandpipers
bisecting the arcs and pitches
of come and retreat over the mounting
hayfield.
Others, for gran- deur, choose the terrorof lightning peals on prairies or the
tallcollapsing cathedrals of stormy seas,
because there they feel dwarfed
and appropriately helpless; others select
the serenity of that ceiling/cellar
of stars they see at night on placid lakes,
because there they feel assured
and universally magnanimous.
But it is the dark emptiness containedin every next moment that seems to me
the most singularly glorious gift,
that void which one is free to fill
with processions of men bearing burning
cedar knots or withparades of blue horses,
belled and ribboned and
stepping sideways,
with tumbling
white-faced mimes or companies
of black-robed choristers; to fill
simplywith hammered silver teapots
or kiln-dried
crockery, tangerine and almond custards,
polonaises, polkas, whittling sticks, wailing
walls; that space large enough to hold allinvented blasphemies and pieties, 10,000
definitions of god and more, never fully
filled, never.
© 1994 by Pattiann Rogersfrom Firekeeper: New and Selected Poems (1994).
Labels: Eisen Ikeda, Kunisada Utagawa, pattiann rogers, paul poiret, poetry, raoul dufy, Shunkôsai Hokushû, Watanabe Ikuharu
posted by lotusgreen at 8:13 PM
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