about 1965 aged about 14 I gave the big questions a lot of thought, as young teens do: ‘life’, ‘the universe’ and all that, heavenly father and mother earth, how could we be the only ones to think in words…. ? Fifty years on I haven’t much to add. Another name could be:
looking at stars
in the beginning there was light
and in the darkness burst
and scattered stars across the bright
uncluttered universe
abundant stars in still solemnity
in broken clusters spread distant and clear
were set in perfect place perfectly free
and glistened coldly on the silent sheer
unbroken face of dark eternity
where mild Terra’s sphere
clean-cutting chaos keenly as a knife
endlessly ran
the span
of endless night
and spun
a soaring shining wheel of light
around the sun
and nourished life
when in the womb warmth of the wild sea
life leapt
and living
struggled to be free
was this merely a greater thing
the other less
or brought bright earth
the very birth
of consciousness ?
that formless certainty
that holds the stars in place
that set the suns against the canopy of space
that built the earth
the mountains and the sea
shatters like glass
if such a thing can be