“the abstract poem

that cleaves through the glassy heights like the hump of a great

beast, the rising reification, integration’s grandest, most

roving whale: in this way Enlil became a god and ruled

the sky: in this way earth became our mother: in this way

angels shaped light”

 

 

Ammons, A. R. (1995). Sphere: The form of a motion. (pp. 136-137). New York, New York: W.W. Norton.

 

Note: The god Enlil is prominent in Sumerian religion and his name translates to “Lord of the Storm”. One story describes his origin as the exhausted breath of the god of the heavens and the goddess of the Earth after sexual union.

 

 

Sighing, gasping,

Earth and sky consummate to produce the wind; the storm

that scrapes its limpest tentacle upon the crust of continents.

Flaccid and flailing, it makes its way back to the ocean

where waterspouts send humpbacks sailing through the atmosphere

like strange birds.

 

Once a roving whale,

now you are the sun-bleached trunk of a redwood

decaying on the sand under the eyes of some distorted form.

 

Now you are an abstract beast,

bending to the mercy of time and insects.

Insects that swarm and cover the sky

in spite of the lord of the storm

who scratches at his mosquito bites

and sighs a relief so massive

that it sets the milky way spinning

like a pinwheel in space.