Grammar in the Empyrean
Trasumanar significar per verba /non si poria. (To “transhumanize” can’t be signified in words.) Dante, Paradiso 1.70-71
If we look together at the night sky,From a vantage point free of pollution,Our first gasp of awe, if we’re honest,Is the sound of our soul longing for home—We know where we come from, where we belong,Only we do not know how to get there.
In stars our body’s elements eruptedFrom cataclysms we can scarcely imagine—Iron out of red giants, when they explode,Loads the heme that colors our blood(So a man will say the stars stir his blood)—And phosphorus, a poison, whitens our teeth.
We know oxygen is also poisonWithin and without our bodies, breath for fire,Consuming carbon such as we are made ofAs if to teach us we could never return Where burning is being and being is lightWe do not see but see our absence in.
But what if we could live in fire like angels?Would we know as we are known? You, my light? I, yours?Would we call light home? All our needs enlumined?Dante’s Empyrean something like this,But that was a universe of beliefNo longer a believable universe.
But his fiction of transcendence, though it failsTo transcend fiction, imparadisesA liberty every tyranny fears:Though oppressed, men and women often look upRather than down—when, not just that stars are there, But that there are stars, transhumanizes them.
Trasumanar significar per verba /non si poria. (To “transhumanize” can’t be signified in words.) Dante, Paradiso 1.70-71
If we look together at the night sky,From a vantage point free of pollution,Our first gasp of awe, if we’re honest,Is the sound of our soul longing for home—We know where we come from, where we belong,Only we do not know how to get there.
In stars our body’s elements eruptedFrom cataclysms we can scarcely imagine—Iron out of red giants, when they explode,Loads the heme that colors our blood(So a man will say the stars stir his blood)—And phosphorus, a poison, whitens our teeth.
We know oxygen is also poisonWithin and without our bodies, breath for fire,Consuming carbon such as we are made ofAs if to teach us we could never return Where burning is being and being is lightWe do not see but see our absence in.
But what if we could live in fire like angels?Would we know as we are known? You, my light? I, yours?Would we call light home? All our needs enlumined?Dante’s Empyrean something like this,But that was a universe of beliefNo longer a believable universe.
But his fiction of transcendence, though it failsTo transcend fiction, imparadisesA liberty every tyranny fears:Though oppressed, men and women often look upRather than down—when, not just that stars are there, But that there are stars, transhumanizes them.
Ginger & Doris
Ginger was my first, I loved her so.Watching her and Fred on the old b-&-wDancing cheek to cheek or caught in the rain,I soared on the clouds that darkened my life at other times.Doris came later, singing should she surrender,And I would whisper, no, no, no!He’s not worthy, but then I thought,Well, maybe he’ll be good to you, I hope so,And I wondered walking home from the old movie house,What would I have done, that close to her?
I know the names we use to categorize all this:Puberty, adolescence, tweens, sexual maturation (Yuk!).But of all the names I’ve ever heardThe one that matters most to meIs the ancient word Eros, twin of Eris,Greek for separation and strife, longing to uniteBecause divided from her, or longing, Equally intense, to tear asunderSince I’ve grown to feel a slave to her.
In other dialects and languages, the word means border.Obvious, isn’t it? Her body is a border. Mine, too.Both of us transgress, or at least trespass,Taking another’s as mine—this is the real human condition.
Do you think we’ll ever get used to What it means to live in constant debt?Always owing someone else (your mother first, of course),Who rarely ever wants to collectAnything from you but gratitude,So hard to say thank you as we so often find it to be?
Most would rather play with themselves— It’s easier, not to mention safer and cheaper—But even they will sometimes feel What Ginger and Doris made me feel,Young, flabby, shy, desperate and lonely as I was:The touch of our bodies so alienMakes a home for the aliens withinWhere gradually they grow accustomedTo intimacy, coming and overcomingTo originate two the only oneIf one is to make any sense at all. Gustave Doré, Dante's Empyrean
Ginger was my first, I loved her so.Watching her and Fred on the old b-&-wDancing cheek to cheek or caught in the rain,I soared on the clouds that darkened my life at other times.Doris came later, singing should she surrender,And I would whisper, no, no, no!He’s not worthy, but then I thought,Well, maybe he’ll be good to you, I hope so,And I wondered walking home from the old movie house,What would I have done, that close to her?
I know the names we use to categorize all this:Puberty, adolescence, tweens, sexual maturation (Yuk!).But of all the names I’ve ever heardThe one that matters most to meIs the ancient word Eros, twin of Eris,Greek for separation and strife, longing to uniteBecause divided from her, or longing, Equally intense, to tear asunderSince I’ve grown to feel a slave to her.
In other dialects and languages, the word means border.Obvious, isn’t it? Her body is a border. Mine, too.Both of us transgress, or at least trespass,Taking another’s as mine—this is the real human condition.
Do you think we’ll ever get used to What it means to live in constant debt?Always owing someone else (your mother first, of course),Who rarely ever wants to collectAnything from you but gratitude,So hard to say thank you as we so often find it to be?
Most would rather play with themselves— It’s easier, not to mention safer and cheaper—But even they will sometimes feel What Ginger and Doris made me feel,Young, flabby, shy, desperate and lonely as I was:The touch of our bodies so alienMakes a home for the aliens withinWhere gradually they grow accustomedTo intimacy, coming and overcomingTo originate two the only oneIf one is to make any sense at all. Gustave Doré, Dante's Empyrean