Quotation & Poems by
Dorion Sagan
[Hear Dorion Sagan read his poems on Omniversica's
Show # 3, recorded 3/6/03. Visit Dorion Sagan's & Lynn Margulis's website Sciencewriters
for more info.]
“In
what sense ‘is there’ a star that exploded a thousand years ago, and that we
see now?…it is to be noted that, according to the distinction between
phenomenon and noumenon, everything visible—ourselves included—could be
nothing but memory and phenomenalization, no less than stars that have exploded,
and appeared precisely when they have ceased to be noumena. “ - Maurizio
Ferraris
Earth
(For
Dad with apologies)
Here is the news from earth:
Life is not life
Science is not science
Mind is not mind
Look at it from space
Where time is out of joint
Where there is no day or night
Or rather there is day-night,
night-and-day at the same time
Daylight and shadow, the blinding sun
and the simultaneously
Sobering and hallucinatory reality of
distant and receding stars**
Look at Earth from out there
It is not everything. It grows humble. It
is half-lit, majestic.
This is the place. This is the time.
Earth is not Earth. It is blue. It grows pale and plain as you recede.
It disappears.
Like the face of the beloved lost in
the crowd
Was it ever there? More there than when the
Lights dim and she becomes Beauty
itself—
A pale perfect shape, sweet face of her
Nude promise concealed and illuminated
by the EXIT sign
Life is not life
It is written in the script of the
universe
Like Coca Cola in Arabic
An interrupted promise
What in magic we call the one-ahead
principle
The men who have set foot on the Moon
Who have gotten off the unhijacked
Space Shuttle
They will tell you that when you are in
orbit
Going around the Earth every 45 minutes
or so
There is no day or night, no up or down
Sun rise follows sunset very quickly
The light cuts through the thin ribbon
of the atmosphere
Illuminating the interior of the
capsule with all the colors of the rainbow
Then, 45 minutes later, night falls
Earth becomes the place where there are
no stars
On
The Nobility Of Poets
I
can say in a line what others can’t say in a book
paraphrasing
Nietzsche of whom
Bataille
believed he was the reincarnation
Madness
is so close to genius
The
medieval librarian reversing the places of sun and peasant
making
the low high, and the high low
Raymond
Carver was told he would not live if he did not change his ways
So
he quit drinking
Lived
a decade longer
Then
died of smoking
Thank
Deus, Duce, God, and Dog
Thanks
be to the gods
Everything
is so close
Like
loser to closer in the eye-rhyme of Joseph Brodsky
inhabitor
of clouds
who
doesn’t mention the laughter in slaughter
and
shouldn’t have to
But
already this is a plagiarism of the imagination
unruly
won
against
the deepest and rarest of all
the
poets who do not write
whose
rhymes match perfectly the dreams they describe
and
whose identical, if grammatically challenged, children they are
Not
to mention, the next of kin, the unwritten
The
dogs with whose Butler’s eyes speak
the
human gestures that all may write
in
the medium of their particular universal communication
Sublime
Baby [HEAR THIS POEM READ ON SHOW 3!]
A book is a baby
The idea may be a little slip up
The result of a drunken moment
But after the pleasure of conception
(if you remember it)
The real work begins
And it’s a lot of work
It will wake you up, demand attention
Then you got to change it
It’s not you but it’s from you
It might not be what you want
It might not be what it wants
So you change, change, change it
It stinks how much you have to change
it
Only some people got away with not
changing their books
People like Henry Miller, for example
He would write a book in a couple of
weeks
You might remember his books were
banned
They grew up unruly
Were not permitted entry into certain
countries
Were disgustingly autobiographical
Visited upon the child the sins of the
father
Were criticized for their lack of craft
by Kundera
Etcetera, etcetera
If you don’t want your books to be
banned
You better rewrite them
Protect the guilty, change their names
Protect the crybabies, change their
acts
Change, change, change your book
If you don’t want it to stink
Remember a book is your baby
You're its parent
Not its friend
* * * * * *
#1129, by Emily Dickinson
[HEAR THIS POEM READ ON SHOW 3!]
Tell all the Truth but tell it slant---
Success in Cirrcuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth's superb surprise
As Lightening to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind---
[Hear Lynn Margulis read this poem on Omniversica's Show # 3, recorded 3/6/03. Visit Lynn Margulis's & Dorion Sagan's website Sciencewriters for more info.]
Return to OO