Now, as to the persistence of matter,
its elements — adamantly discrete, as displayed on the periodic table — and their properties, look. Here are indicative drawings of Leonardo da Vinci. They are replete, as you may perceive, with implicit exclamations.
—
You may concur with Leonardo's insinuations that the particles of materiality, profoundly detached, are yet indiscriminately inclined to merge, as happenstance and affinities occur, which Leo devoutly represents in charcoal, chalk, and ink — cathedral domes, the tendrils of flowers, the inner and outer anatomy of man, scissors, a machine gun, clouds, rocks, forests.
As all substance apparently bonded, a superorb, before hurtling apart in the Big Bang,
—
the ultimate instance of the fatal flaw ** innate in every compounding of elements — a compulsion to disintegrate, decay, erode, dissolve,
latent in Leo's every stroke, the wilting and rotting of lilies, the decline and demise of swans, the wasting of pigments.
—
Cycles vastly suggestive of perpetuity. Eh, Big Science?
** The Japanese, you may
know, say a thing to be beautiful must contain a small imperfection.
** The Hindus, you may know, say without a spot of filth the soul cannot cohere.
** And remember Shiva.
YOUR ORGANS PULSING
IN RHYTHMS AS LONG AS YEARS,
AS BRIEF
AS MILLISECONDS
Here in midmind, Justice, Your Honor,
ruminating on the politics of mating,
on the appreciation of our equities,
we sense, Justice, Your Honor,
that we are incessantly monitored,
randomly prompted, ambiguously rebuked
by overmind, by undermind,
gliding down over the tin roofs of Freetown,
exploring a cave at Altamira,
telling stories of spite and yearning
in the partners' dining room,
in the homeless shelter,
walking the evening streets.
Oliver Rice has received the Theodore Roethke Prize and
thrice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. His poems have appeared widely in journals
and anthologies in the United States, as well as in Canada, England, Austria,
Turkey, and India. His book of poems, On Consenting to Be a Man, has been introduced by Cyberwit, a diversified publishing house in the cultural capital Allahabad, India,
and is available on Amazon.
