June 2022
Bio Note: I must remind myself--as a rereading of this poem might suggest--that we live among geological cataclysms. Nature is only pacific for brief periods, similar to our species, which is forever fighting itself, and if we are not living between military revolutions, we are living through them, and if we do not perish by them, or by geological and climatic revolutions, we are living with them. By comparison, our cultural revolutions are weak echoes.
Magnificat
The greatest statement ever made,
the magnum opus of all things,
is the manifest of desire.
Desire the perpetual, desire
the profound, the everywhere,
texts whistling
in the trees of Ceylon,
blowing up gulf coasts,
desire in the heart that ceases,
still as red coral, made so by it,
and in the heart that remains,
and in the dissolving pool
after the rain and in the rain.
It is the dumb giant gone
to the children’s tea party,
the return of the lava avalanche
and the rarest mountain flowers,
the tsunami that washes out
generations, whole islands.
It is the earthly organism
cooperating with systems
here and beyond the moon,
while we stand, desire itself,
forever awash in bright danger.
Originally published in Transversales (2013)
©2022 Michael Gessner
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