art music poetry

Astatine poem by Janet Kuypers

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Astatine

Janet Kuypers

from the “ Periodic Table of Poetry” series (#085, At)
(with references to the poem “Fantastic Car Crash”, 7/3/98)

Everything shatters with you, you know.
I am left picking up the pieces
after dealing with only fractional amounts of you.

I’ve only been able to infer what you’re like
by knowing your brethren, as everyone around me
and all the gapers gawk, as the decay grows.

In your twisted way, you come from the decay
of others… And what do you leave in your wake?
More radioactive destruction, as all around you

slows down to stare, until your instability
corrodes you down to the basics in the world.
And yeah, what was left of you after you were gone

was so much more stable that you were,
but it was only after so much of your destruction
that you left blood dripping down to the street.

So, all I can think is that this continual decay
is your contribution, this radioactive
short-term flash of decay, is you.

I’ve tried to learn, I’ve tried to study these
microscopic parts of you to make sense of you…
But whether or not you ever leave enough,

well, from what you’ve shown me, I have to keep
reminding myself that despite your destruction,
despte this decay of yours, I have to keep going.

Because, when it comes to you,
when it comes to what you do…
This happens all the time.

Magnesium poem by Janet Kuypers

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Magnesium (#012, Mg)

Janet Kuypers

from the “ Periodic Table of Poetry” series

All this time,
I’ve only known you from afar.

Every once in a while,
I’d see you in the distance
while I was driving down the street.

I may have seen you
only eleven times in my life,
and I know a part of you
is essential in all of my living cells,
but as I said,
I’ve only seen you from afar.

Once, I saw you
outside my bedroom window
after the first snowfall
covered the land in a blanket of white.
That’s when I saw you
walking outside alone,
looking for your next meal.

I know you can leave
me with a sour taste,
but I know you are needed
in ATP, DNA, RNA,
and it aches me to see you suffer so.

I think I saw you with your children
as I sat out on the balcony
of a father’s house —
I watched you in the distance,
but I didn’t watch you alone.
After a while
someone said to me
that you looked peaceful,
but at another time
they would have shot
and killed you instead.

As I said,
I only see you from afar,
so I try to learn
of how you were created
from such large places,
at temperatures higher
than anything we could imagine.

I tried to learn,
because one day
I was told to go outside,
and that’s when I saw you
laying down among the trees,
never to walk away
from my home again.

I’ve always only
seen you from afar,
and suddenly,
as you lay there,
I could see your organs
shriveled and sunken in
after your skin
had pulled away
as you wasted away.
Suddenly
I could see traces
from your capillaries,
and I could trace
your rib cage,
outline your spine.

I know the heat that created you.
I know you’re highly flammable,
and I know that when you start to burn
you’re impossible to stop.
You fire bombed
in World War Two,
and the only way
they could stop you
was by dumping dry sand on you,
because you’d burn through the air,
and you’d even burn under water.

That’s why you’ve been used
in fireworks and in flares.
That’s why you’ve been used
for illumination and flashes
in photography.

So they call this
momento mori,
I thought,
when I grabbed my camera
to photograph you
in your final resting place.
Because
even though
I’ve seen you,
I’ve needed you, and
I’ve known the damage
you can do,
I needed to photograph you
right then and there.
I’m sorry.
I needed to
remember you this way.

Dysprosium, poem by Janet Kuypers

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Dysprosium

Janet Kuypers

from the “ Periodic Table of Poetry” series (#66, Dy)
12/26/12

I knew I could cut through you like a knife.
But, you were always difficult to get at.
With you, I couldn’t get my fingers wet
when I wore surgical gloves in my searches
for you. I couldn’t feel what I was doing
when I was looking for you, but I kept looking,
because you had the highest magnetic strength
of anything I had ever dealt with in my life.

You drew me to you. I couldn’t help it.

I know you’re not free, and the thing is,
you’ve always tried to bring along
some of your mineral compatriots
whenever we had the chance to meet.
And still, I’d have to search the world
for you, go to the other side of the planet,
because I swear, I thought you were worth
more than all of the tea in China.

I couldn’t help it. You’d put a whole new
light on everything after you hit me
with your laser-like intensity. As I said,
you had this magnetic effect on me.
You’re rare. And I couldn’t help it.

I should have known that if you got close,
if I got the chance to breathe you in,
you’d probably be an explosive hazard
to me. I should have known that
what we have could be ignited
by the sparks we would make.

But as I said, I couldn’t help it.
Even if you cause this spark,
even if you cause this explosive reaction,
I’d still have to come back,
because no matter what,
the burning I feel for you
doesn’t last as long as you do.
You burn readily, but you’re hard to get.
And I’m waiting for that next chance
to feel those reactions with you again.

Darwin’s Voyage of the Beagle Revisited. 3 Poems. Ian Irvine (Hobson)

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Tree of LifeImage: ‘Darwin’s Tree of Life’ [from public domain image, drawn by Darwin]

Poems

A Power Denuded the Granite

The Devil’s Confervae

The Work of Minute and Tender Animals

 

Poems by Ian Irvine (Hobson), copyright all rights reserved.

 

Please Note: many of these poems meditate upon or, in some cases rework/recombine, random phrases appearing in the 2nd edition of Charles Darwin’s The Voyage of the Beagle. The first edition of the work appeared in 1839. I hope I have done some justice to the natural lyricism evident in Darwin’s relaxed prose style.

 

(i.)

 

A Power Denuded the Granite

 

All that glitters in the sun’s rays

suggests a profound ocean

and a growing burden

 

How many years

short of infinity

to polish these

burnished stones?

 

I have come to the tides

and the rivulets

the countless inundations,

the waves on the black rocks

the cataracts, the great rivers

the stubborn work of millennia.

 

I am growing old and weary

on this boat,

this salt-stained boat

of Empire.

 

(ii.)

 

The Devil’s Confervae

 

Can you see us from behind?

early morning salt haze—the sun

rising. And the boat slowing

enters an eerie stretch of

ocean, velvet-red, and

glides between a god-infested heaven

and a godless carpet of sea stuff

This blood track—it must be

two miles long—of

infernal waters.

 

The boat slows, we glide

Can you see us from behind?

The morning is huge

as we plough

the pulp of our sorrow

the whole surface of the water

pulses—and the waves lapping.

 

Under the lens, I observe

the contraction of tiny granular spheres

their number must be infinite

 

I’ve heard they make

the Red Sea

(appear) red.

 

(iii.)

 

The Work of Minute and Tender Animals

 

Not far off shore

we test the bottom

(the bottomless ocean)

The line spins down and down.

 

Envisage:

a steep edifice

(theorise: underwater ramparts, sheer

and dense).

 

In awe of these submerged mountains—

accumulated stone of ages!

 

The island, the reef, the coral—the coral

the living part of the greater death,

a vast, eroded, sedimentary death.

 

Once a volcano—spewed hot

then froze into a geologic form

then whipped by the wind

and lashed by the water

for countless millennia.

Amazing to contemplate—

the splendid work of ages.

 

It looms from obscene depths

and bleaches in the diving—

the underwater kingdom of

vegetable bones!

But near the surface

such colours, such vividness, such

intricacies of fish and frond.

 

Coral! The epiphanies of coral

their various shapes

their complex textures

—marvellous life on a bed of death!

 

Our ancestry as sediment—

compacted into memory.

Today, for the first time, I sense

their concrete presence.

This self, mere fruit of their tragedies—

(the past beneath the waves).