The New Astronomy
The speaker is Katharina Kepler (1546–1622), mother of renowned astronomer Johannes Kepler. In 1615, she was accused of witchcraft (source).
This, you say, is the universe: one flute, two violas, one horn, two cellos
And around the Earth, between planets, some force
An angle, some flesh but the flesh of music, an x
Lulling all the worlds into the gentlenesses of cows.
Much talk of magnets. Magnets, water, brooms, light, the light that can be gathered like breath
In lenses, in hands, in mirrors, and x might act as light does
Passing through spaces not really present, not being present, having no present beingness, not being in places, not being in places, not being in places, not being in places o but between, not being between places, not being between places but, but, still, yes, although, hitherto its wherewithal keeping apart dodecadragons etcetera, and so on, so to speak…
I have almost understood you — once — that night was bright
Bright as befits a place with a desire in it — and —
And the wind was sharp and full — it weeded and raked
And whistled through the streets far below and the fields
My neck and your face, for anything, to stop it or feed it.
Then, we both looked up —
A quiet fire, a stony fire, a thistle caught ember
When I was asked to confess
Again and again the fire was behind me.
Confess I entered barred houses the calf ridden to death
The skull the sexton the concoctions the bent girl I was
Shown long dull entrails on paper. Forced to read them.
But how could I?
The lord’s word will be apparent to those of the lord.
I said from the paper, The lord’s words will be apparent only to those of the lord.
I was shut in oak.
I smelt my insides.
I was shown each glittering tooth of my executioner all the possibilities of my body
I forced my knees
To my chest my feet
Into corners my eyes
Into knees till I saw a red that was not
Red till I was a place on the Earth, one crammed point on the Earth.
A place on the Earth was named Katharina the wretched
Desire filled Katharina and she became
Heavy the tongue of my grace or my desire
She stammered against the red wall of my desire
The red roof of my grace — my lord
Peel each vein from me —
Find that despite me I have been, been yours, my lord, my lord
Yours all throughout your poured years, your hours
How much I’ve wept I weep no longer
Among the years how long the hour the life
How long made with what alchemy craft
That only cowed, crushed, I recognize —
Still — but been yours this throat
Yours this heart
My lord with a knife
I cut the meat given. I drink spit.
I add the hours to my voice
To voices of worms nettles burdock hemlock
Cuckoos my aunt stewed up on the stooped bluff
A spruce in the fire swung like a door the wind that yanks its crown is not the wind that plays
In the fields ago —
Away from the Empire — letters come and go slowly and at heavy expense.
Scurrying across the papers, the maps only murmur to me, and only in Benedict’s hateful spit.
No longer my fields, my nettles, attars, my acids —
No longer my Leonberg.
Here where the sky is the wormy pink of a scraped throat, the wind is flying away
Like my voice in search of some anger, my voice flies away
Like the wind looking for a word, away into what is this little that is
Which has the sun for the center, you say, a center, the sun borrows from no central fire but is a borrower nonetheless, yes, like everything else, which means that I am completely within my rights to write for a telescope, or some lenses at —
Today is far, bright.
I am a blister in a blue mouth.
I go to the fields to suckle an ire.
O, between my hands and the vast light
Only dandelions clotting in light raw as milk
The embracing light, the wrinkling light —
In my fields, I walked, I plucked
My herbs said the words of my herbs as I pluck hold weigh prove
Dissolve Barwinek Bobownik through the vastness
Between my hands
Through all the places on the Earth
The wind flies away — something sung — is that what he meant, you, I mean —
All the hours on the crammed Earth —
Oaks bright in the light between them.
A poppy in the sun pants faster —
I count each tree.
One, two, beyond all the way all the way there—
Now I am less afraid, but why of
What light netting the trees
Turning, molding, separating, making each tree, making each shape an Each, a One —
One Oak. Thick, blotted, — an oak weighs what, how?, four — baffling
Where is my anger?
Where is Katharina?
You might know —
You who have been you
You who have been — who will be my son
Have you understood me?
I wipe my face.
Tonight I will press eyelashes between the pages of your books
Johannes — Johannes! —
You are my son —
You write letters to a man in Italy —
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Notes:
The line, "letters come and go slowly and at heavy expense," is a direct quotation from Koestler, Arthur. The Sleepwalkers: A History of Man's Changing Vision of the Universe. London: Arkana, 1989.
ξ
Varun Ravindran was born and lives.