Could you call it “Dead Motion”—
that of the atoms, planets,
stars, galaxies—seeing
it can no more cease
than dead men can collect
old bones and resume being;

like them, oblivious
of its own existence,
of its own purpose, if any;
and all material things
mere eddyings in a tempest
of non-ontogeny

where opposed cataclysms—light
and gravity—dice each other
into infinitesimal
spirals and torques that, over
billiennia, coalesce
into Mineral, then Animal—

among which none remembers
its own provenience—neither
the crag nor the condor
nor any woman or man—
because the very elements-
of-the-elements are at war

so that at night we turn
somewhat to stone and by day somewhat to fire,
whereas neither fire nor stone
even knows we or they exist?
—I merely inquire.











By permission of the author.