print previewback EDWARD MAYES
On Lines from Czesław Miłosz’s “Meaning”
Through interstellar fields, through the revolving galaxies
—If you could have, would you have
Asked for more thunder or asked for more
Time, your eyes open in a broad flat field, you
A fleet messenger, astonished by the finite,
Holding the infinite in the palm of your hand?—“That is so,” didn’t you say it, the Via
Lactea spiraling out of anyone’s
Control, you a planet wanderer, and did you
Not see the occultation of Aldebaran, or Giordano
Bruno hung upside down, naked, then burned alive?—That day, February 17, 1600, at the Campo
De’ Fiori, the universe was proclaimed limitless,
The ashes of Ash Wednesday, what was left of
Bruno’s body thrown into the Tiber, free-falling,
Sunspots erupting, inertia divided by velocity minus gravity.
See Czesław Miłosz’s poem “Campo dei Fiori”