--Wislawa Szymborska
One day, they'll be laughing on Enceladus.
Clowns on a tightrope from Deimos to Mars!
(Meanwhile, Sunyatta. the black bear, expands.)
Truth is, perfect worlds don't happen--
Truth is, clowns will build space towns
that look like Detroit.
Don't worry, Shakespeare will be translated
into dialects spoken on Titan
where they'll be stored at absolute Kelvin
beneath New New Jersey's methane lakes.
Don't worry, one December 38th, Wislawa
Szymborska will rise from a wormhole
and take us to poems light-years beyond
abandoned tents and motionless flags.
Thomas Dorsett
This poem was first published in the May-June 2018 issue of The Broadkill Reivew.
Commentary
One of my favorite Latin proverbs provides a key to the interpretation of this poem: Caelum non animam mutant qui trans mare current. This maxim comes from the Odes of Horace, which is translated as follows: They change the sky, not their soul, who rush across the sea. In other words, you can't escape yourself with a change of scene--especially if you rush compulsively to that change of scene. After packing your clothes and hurrying off to a place where you intend to start anew, you might imagine that your old self has been left behind; once you arrive, however, you will discover that the one unpacking your socks is the same person who packed them.
We humans will take our positive qualities, that is, wisdom and love, along with us once we begin to colonize extraterrestrial worlds; we will, alas! also take along our greeds, hates, and delusions as well.This poem illustrates some of the possible effects of the latter.
What can redeem us? Since I am a poet, I symbolize what is needed by the advent of Wislawa Szymborska, the great Polish poet, who here represents poetry in the broadest sense of that word, namely, the non-egotistical dedication to life with as little greed, hate, and delusion, as possible.
I am not naive; I realize that this transformation is almost as unlikely as the The Second Coming.This explains my reference to wormholes and the impossible date of December 38th. With love, however, incredible progress isn't impossible at all: steps toward that transformation are very possible indeed. All of us can make our world and ourselves a little bit better, I have no doubt about that. Commitment to this transformation is what makes us human; it is, I believe, why we are here.
Note: "Sunyatta" is the Buddhist term for "Emptiness"--here symbolizing the relentless expansion of space.
One day, they'll be laughing on Enceladus.
Clowns on a tightrope from Deimos to Mars!
(Meanwhile, Sunyatta. the black bear, expands.)
Truth is, perfect worlds don't happen--
Truth is, clowns will build space towns
that look like Detroit.
Don't worry, Shakespeare will be translated
into dialects spoken on Titan
where they'll be stored at absolute Kelvin
beneath New New Jersey's methane lakes.
Don't worry, one December 38th, Wislawa
Szymborska will rise from a wormhole
and take us to poems light-years beyond
abandoned tents and motionless flags.
Thomas Dorsett
This poem was first published in the May-June 2018 issue of The Broadkill Reivew.
Commentary
One of my favorite Latin proverbs provides a key to the interpretation of this poem: Caelum non animam mutant qui trans mare current. This maxim comes from the Odes of Horace, which is translated as follows: They change the sky, not their soul, who rush across the sea. In other words, you can't escape yourself with a change of scene--especially if you rush compulsively to that change of scene. After packing your clothes and hurrying off to a place where you intend to start anew, you might imagine that your old self has been left behind; once you arrive, however, you will discover that the one unpacking your socks is the same person who packed them.
We humans will take our positive qualities, that is, wisdom and love, along with us once we begin to colonize extraterrestrial worlds; we will, alas! also take along our greeds, hates, and delusions as well.This poem illustrates some of the possible effects of the latter.
What can redeem us? Since I am a poet, I symbolize what is needed by the advent of Wislawa Szymborska, the great Polish poet, who here represents poetry in the broadest sense of that word, namely, the non-egotistical dedication to life with as little greed, hate, and delusion, as possible.
I am not naive; I realize that this transformation is almost as unlikely as the The Second Coming.This explains my reference to wormholes and the impossible date of December 38th. With love, however, incredible progress isn't impossible at all: steps toward that transformation are very possible indeed. All of us can make our world and ourselves a little bit better, I have no doubt about that. Commitment to this transformation is what makes us human; it is, I believe, why we are here.
Note: "Sunyatta" is the Buddhist term for "Emptiness"--here symbolizing the relentless expansion of space.
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