Poems by Such Starlight
Today’s fragment are some lines I wrote in a comments section on another platform In response to a random book paragraph shared by another poet as a form of bibliomancy. I’m careful with that sort of thing (magical ritual). I will refer you to Michael Muhammad Knight’s fascinating book Magic In Islam for the complexities of magical thought that have influenced my own thinking in recent years.
Poetry is not a rational act. “The poet must make himself seer...” Rimbaud claimed. Poetry is a form of magical thinking, a quest through language for words that will effect a shift of vision. Sometimes the poem slays Grendel. Sometimes it woos the beloved. Sometimes it is the expression of being utterly inundated by The Beloved. Our global civilization lumbers from a super rational automation to a reactive, ironic parochialism. Wild magic or mystical abandon have little venue in this predetermined labyrinth.
A number of persons I’ve talked to this week have mentioned longing to see stars unpolluted by light. I’ve been so fortunate to experience the night sky in some remote places. I can also remember looking up at the night sky in northern Maine, feeling as if I’d “escaped” from the world of technology and industrial production, but then I noticed a satellite floating by, and I crawled into my tent, somewhat diminished and looked at the internet on my phone again.
Poetry in this context is like a receding glacier.
Anyway, my lines:
October 3, 2021
Amino acids are the basic building blocks of proteins—muscles. Billions of human bodies are interfaced and networked. Is the planet dying; are we (the species) dying? Mammals grew hair for the ice age. Now the ice recedes and the milk is spoiled. The billionaires already measure enclosures for the galaxies. How do I read my poems by such starlight? My muscles are twitching.