THE SIZE OF EARTH:
A SHORT SIMPLE POEM TO GET US OUT OF IRAQ
For Laura & George W. Bush
Having just seen Orion upside down
over Sydney Harbor
my head aligned
with the point of his hanging dagger
my feet with its haft
I gather this stuff we stand on has two sides
and that from the absence
of parallactic shift
our earth compared to the space
in Orion’s dagger
is a speck, almost nothing at all
ii
And that from either edge
of this speck of planet dust
we can look beyond the apparencies
of Northern and Southern Cross
to the great stream of the Milky Way
either upside or down
and the glorious imaginative source
you shall love
over and beyond Homer
the Vedas the Da Xue
Dante the Shahnama Marx the Ring
even our epiphanies
and our devotions
leading to massacres
and autos-da-fe
iii
--- literally billions
of planets in our galaxy --- New York Times 10/5/06
what can we know of them?
iv
When we just consider ourselves strong
we have the power to create
a hell we cannot think is God’s
and when we see we are a speck
we become a speck that can
wake to the glory
v
--- consider our withdrawal from Vietnam
--- now a tourist destination! ---
--- not the end of the world!
