ONCE  THE  SOLE  PROVINCE


                                    of genius here at home,
Was it this, our idea of access to a larger world
That invented the world itself (first, second,
Third), past accuracy we are bound to inhabit now
As targets, positioned in a trillionth
Of the smallest measuring- microresults
Made in the least, most unimaginable chronology?
No more time-outs. For we are either ready or
We must be ready or not, an expensive mix
Of life-based chemistry perpetually on the verge
Of going to heaven in a vapor, and almost making it,
Almost, except there's that one true destiny
Incontestably driving down on us,
The finally collapsible ones,
Who are are lumped in a uniform density at last,
At last coherent to desire. It is a density 
Greater than the sun's.


                                                                                        But Day,
There must be some other reference,
Which is why you so nervously dwell on us,
On earth which keeps turning, embarrassed, from the light:
Indiscriminate shine on Shiite, Methodist, Hun,
And pump of excitability.Dissatisfied,
As all things on earth,
Is there anything earthly that can't be made to rise,
Emit disciples, the collimated and the laser lean?
They march to you, old outside agitator,
While you who pump the world with promises
Are simply not to be believed. All those diversions,
The years and decades, the manifold span of life
- These were the dialectic of a fold
Formed out of almost nothingness, a fold of hours
In a space where the "hour" is eccentricity. So
Pity the day, beyond which we can see,
For if time is distance then distance must be life
And who is there on earth who will not go
In answer to its call? Call this
The aim of every reverence:
That outside ourselves there must be a scale more vast,
Time free of whimsy, an endless unbended reach
In which to recollect our planet, our hours, and ourselves.


A reductionism that makes the world
complex, a truth that simply nothing
can explain, is how events curled
up in space when seen are scattering.



                 Douglas Crase,
from The Astropastorals.