SONNETS FROM SPACE
I
We sit, in love and gazing at the stars
That fill the violet evening sky with sparks.
What flies up there, besides our thoughts, or larks
That sing life’s glory or its scars?
Is there a being on a quest from Mars,
And launching out in meteoric arcs?
What answers would he seek when he embarks
Across the void between his world and ours?
We love each other, sitting two as one,
And mostly, life is full with soothing sun,
You hold me as we face the starry sky,
To contemplate what comes and goes; and why.
But sometimes, through my heart, cold winds have blown,
And even when you’re here, I feel alone.
II
We fear the silent darkness of the night,
Afraid the stars that slowly roll about
Might suddenly grow dim, and flicker out.
And so we hold each other ’til the light;
Asleep, or rocking madly in delight
Of one another’s moans and shrieks and shouts,
That fill the silence, blocking most our doubts
About eternal love, or guiding light.
Our music roars and echoes through the dark,
Like wine-dark viol, silver cymbal spark.
We exhale love songs in each other’s souls,
A manic chorus easing worldly roles,
Love’s noise explodes, then blazes in our eyes,
And hides the deathly silence of the skies.
III
Between the galaxies so far apart,
Among the stars and planets of the night,
There’s emptiness to give our souls a fright,
To leave us with a vacuum of the heart.
Although we call in space with words and art,
We try to beam our thoughts to cast a light,
And send our love to make the blackness bright;
The unmapped darkness still leers from our chart.
There’s so much emptiness, it goes beyond
Our dreams, our hopes, our hearts so overfull;
Few lights reflect across the endless pond
Of space, so infinite, and past our pull.
Though love, I’ve heard, can last eternally,
Can it fill up a bleak infinity?
IV
So permanent you seem; you light my sky,
You guide me in my orbiting through space,
I wait your dawning in this dismal place
Of darkness where we all must live and die.
When faced with night and asking how and why,
Your glow bestirs a humor and a grace,
I spin, then, at an optimistic pace,
In love with living. Your warmth makes me fly.
But solar flares and sunspots leave no doubt
That someday, light and fire could fizzle out,
And in the darkness that your light restrains,
In drift around the ember that remains;
My dizzy planet, fading in the night,
Will spin around a star with no more light.
V
Where is heaven, is it out beyond
The cosmos that we view and we explore,
With paltry instruments and little more
Than zealous theory, rapt religious bond?
I think sometimes that we are overfond
Of Ptolemeic notions, and a core
Belief that all our motions truly soar,
That magic circles us; we wave the wand.
Perhaps there is no heaven out past space;
That love is only in this earthly place,
And we should live like flowers on a rise,
And let the breezes sweep us to the skies;
That maybe heaven’s love’s not from afar,
Past distant stars; but just from where we are.
VI
The universe spins out, chaotically,
The stars, so brilliant white, disperse themselves
‘Mongst gasping branches, shifting sandy shelves
Of oceans that may rise spasmodically,
Or disappear in glacial memory.
Among the atoms, starlight’s photon elves,
Will crash protons to quarks as starlight delves
And breaks existence unrelentingly.
If hopes should take us heavenward, I fear
That chaos there will bring us back to earth
And make eternity a jape, a jeer;
The universe, ironic house of mirth.
But still I’ll hope – as all things fall apart
That in the chaos, we’ll find love and art.
VII
Where are those strings that hold us in our place?
Are they dimensions of our seeking heart,
The twanging notes of some canonic art?
An unexplained arpeggio out in space
Might be what brings a cadence to the race.
Vibrations change, have changed right from the start,
And can’t be placed by writings of Decartes
Or Heisenberg; the measures move apace.
“There are no Gods,” some physisists have mused;
Still, with religion, science is infused.
As long as mystery surrounds the stars,
We all pontificate, debate in bars,
And hope for music of eternal peace,
A universal chord that will not cease.