IS INFINITY THE LENGTH OF A BLADE OF GRASS? IS ETERNITY THE DARKNESS WITHIN A BEE’S EYE?

Ivan Argüelles


Adelle Foley in memoriam

as if emerging from the labyrinthine
plot of an ancient Greek novel
your life unraveled fromthe thin skein
of light that involved it for so many decades
who can say when the seed of death
planted on your birth day suddenly
began to bloom noxious and beautiful
somewhere in the secret of your body
which of the many uncounted pages
passing before your eyes in rapid succession
was the one you should have noticed
in particular with its painted footnotes
like hieroglyphs directing a reader
to the passage Underground?
around you bright spring leaves whispered
into the ear of Zephyrus in passing
those fatal words THIS IS IT!
as if in love with concrete sunshine
splashed the numerous city streets
clouds oblivious to motorized traffic
continued their heedless and errant path
toward some inscrutable sunset
neither planned nor desired
hurried and violent sequences of pain
alone absorbed you in a sleep of centuries
from which you would never wake

is it obscene for us the survivors
clinging to our hapless shadows
to keep walking on planet earth taking in
all its greenery and fragrances?
or be we all as dead as the insect
caught in a twilight web
illusory breath and substance
in thrall to vague memories
of the dance
the many many of us
still kept alive by the weight
of a grain of sand
the many many of us
dusty shapes forever
dissolving

06-30-16

Mexican-American poet Ivan Argüelles is the author of many books of poetry, most recently Orphic Cantos, FIAT LUX, Duo poemata, and Ars Poetica. A retired librarian, he has resided in Berkeley since 1978.