Principalities of June
Original
light broke apart,
the
Gnostics say,
when
time began,
singular
radiance
fractioned
into form
–
an easy theory
to
believe,
in
early summer,
when
that first performance
seems
repeated daily.
Though
wouldn’t it mean
each
fracturing took us
that
much further
from
heaven?
Not
in this town,
Not
in June: harbor
and
cloudbank, white houses’
endlessly
broken planes,
a
long argument
of
lilac shadows and whites
as
blue as noon:
phrasebooks
of day,
articulated
most of all
in
these roses,
which
mount and swell
in
dynasties of bloom,
their
easy idiom
a
soundless compaction
of
lip on lip. Their work,
these
thick flowerheads?
Built
to contain
sunlight,
they interrupt
that
movement just enough
to
transfix in air, at eye level,
now: held still, and shattering,
which
is the way with light:
the
more you break it
the
nearer it comes to whole.
***
When great trees fall,
rocks on distant hills shudder,
lions hunker down
in tall grasses,
and even elephants
lumber after safety.
When great trees fall
in forests,
small things recoil into silence,
their senses
eroded beyond fear.
When great souls die,
the air around us becomes
light, rare, sterile.
We breathe, briefly.
Our eyes, briefly,
see with
a hurtful clarity.
Our memory, suddenly sharpened,
examines,
gnaws on kind words
unsaid,
promised walks
never taken.
Great souls die and
our reality, bound to
them, takes leave of us.
Our souls,
dependent upon their
nurture,
now shrink, wizened.
Our minds, formed
and informed by their
radiance,
fall away.
We are not so much maddened
as reduced to the unutterable ignorance
of dark, cold
caves.
And when great souls die,
after a period peace blooms,
slowly and always
irregularly. Spaces fill
with a kind of
soothing electric vibration.
Our senses, restored, never
to be the same, whisper to us.
They existed. They existed.
We can be. Be and be
better. For they existed.
Maya Angelou
(1928-2014)
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