Old Poems from a Summer

zoec
Sat, 28 Jul 2018 13:29:12 +0000

Dans la vie intérieure, le temps tient lieu d'espace.
(In the inner life, time takes the place of space.)
Simone Weil, La Pesanteur et la Grâce (Gravity and Grace)

Inside [the black hole's event horizon]… [what used to be a spatial
coordinate] is the time. … The singularity… is not a place in space; it
is a moment in time.
James B. Hartle, Gravity: An Introduction to Einstein's General Relativity

In my old poems I saw
the sentimental one
scenting sighs, seeing scars
everywhere, twisting them
into words, arranging words
so they fit in a grid,
regular, repeating.

Preoccupied, she wanted the answer
to the only question: What had made her
like this? An effect that sought the cause and
nothing else. Her city caught in a verdant
early summer day, light abounded; she
felt time had been running out silently.

How much has really changed ever since?

I now have an answer, and more.
She made me; cause, effect. Questions!
How will I be? What will I be?
What am I?

I am a tiny bit of what she wasn't:
the all-embracing space and time beyond
her self, her fear of being forgotten,
solitude unwitnessed, and pain futile.

I am not just her descendant either.
Holding her precious gift of exposed self,
I too am exposed to what I am not,
asking how much has changed, what I'm changing.

This is a new one I wrote today.

Edit: replaced one "the" with "an".

Comments URL: https://tildes.net/~creative/3zv/old_poems_from_a_summer

Votes: 6

Comments: 2