Robert Pinsky

 

At the summit of Mauna Kea, an array of antennae

Sensitive to the colors of invisible light. Defiling

The sacred mountain, they tilt and sidle to measure

Submillimeter waves from across the universe:

System of cosmic removes and fine extremes

Devoted to track the wavering nature of things.

Your father Adam known also as Makea, 

Your mother Lakshmi known also as Eve:

Both of them smaller than the width of a hair,

They ride astride matched tortoises on a road

Nine microns wide, following another Eve

And another Adam all in a skybound procession

Of mothers and fathers, all the Lakshmis and Vishnus

Tendering you their Cain and you their Abel.

The snow Papa and the fire Pele observe tainting

Antennae controlled by a hand in Massachusetts.

Innumerable names and doings, innumerable

Destinies, remotes histories, deities and tongues.

Somewhere among them your ancestor the slave,

Also your ancestors the thief the prince the stranger.

Each particle a thread of crazed pilgrim life

Passing as one tortoise mount pauses to tread

The emanation of a dead star still alive

And afire, back when the astral procession began.

Everybody by descent the outcome of a rape.

Everybody also the outcome of a great love

Ruth, Holofernes, Sappho, Abélard, mostly

Anonymous traveling a filament of light

Across the nothing between the clouds of being

Into the pinhole iris of your mortal eye ---

The heart of each telescope on Mauna Kea,

Is a tube finer than a hair on Vishnu's head.

On each hair of each Vishnu's head, a procession

Of subatomic tortoises crosses the universe.

In the skull of each tortoise in that procession

A faceted jewel attuned to a spectral channel

Where Kronos eats us his children, each contracting 

By each one's nature a micron suture of light.

Poem "Procession" by Robert Pinsky from "At the Foundling Hospital" published by Farrar Straus Giroux / New York 2016