No Second Eden: Poems

Aurora Borealis of the Inner Eye

Aurora Borealis of the Inner Eye Not having seen the Northern Lights, I see them as one sees, eyes closed, A glare upon the retina. As spherical as is the sky, The eyeball pulses to the storms Erupting from a lodestone sun. If Eskimos have no more words For snow than we (and we have drifts, Crevasses, avalanches, slush . . . ) Have they as many color words As called for by auroras? Slits In visors, parka hoods worn low, Must darken snowscapes which they see. Rip off the bone, throw back the fur, And face the zenith. Colors move There in the windless arctic night As water, lit by radium, Would move in slowly tilted ponds, Or phosphorescence from a gas, Across the plane of Zodiac, Progress without a meaning. High, Impermanent, illusory, The ions form and form again. Not gods, not being without change, Amorphous as the fish, the ram, Goat, crab are not, these phantoms awe By presence purely. If you seek Book illustrations look at clouds. In silence, as the latitudes 11 You are reading copyrighted material published by Ohio University Press/Swallow Press. Unauthorized posting, copying, or distributing of this work except as permitted under U.S. copyright law is illegal and injures the author and publisher. Grow high, and in crisp air its ice Is crystalline, the flashes raise Their semaphores whose messages We cannot know, or bright flags read; As, when the optic nerve forgets And in the dark the last shapes fade, To our own eyelids we are blind. 12 You are reading copyrighted material published by Ohio University Press/Swallow Press. Unauthorized posting, copying, or distributing of this work except as permitted under U.S. copyright law is illegal and injures the author and publisher. ...