Cosmology

Christopher Buckley

Most days I find myself

 considering the encrypted

 clouds, though, while everything

 is blue through the boughs 

 of heaven, I know the stars

 will hardly spell out 

 our names in specks 

 across the enormity（巨大，暴行） of night.

 We have these bodies 

 from stars, second-hand, 

 a diminishing（逐渐缩小的） quotient 

 of dust lagging behind 

 the soul, beggar with a cart --

 told sticks, furniture

 piled on. . . . 

                      You're tired,

 your bones positioned on 

 the couch each evening to ruminate,

 to remember where you left off

 taking notes, floating 

 suppositions, a few 

 unlikely alternatives,

 before they fall, like 

 the last remaining cloud

 into the sea, 

 before the stars 

 scar your thoughts 

 and the moon freezes

 the lemon blossoms,

 another vague（模糊的） brilliance

 abandoning you . . . .

More dust glimmers

 before dawn 

 where you can see 

 the back of the sky

 shouldering empty space,

 confirming nothing --

 the dulled earth 

 just another rock, 

 where we came from --

a few molecules rewired,

 bunched up now and

 heading off. . . . 

You've come this far

 with holes in your shoes,

 leaves in the pockets 

 of your coat -- all you have

 finally to show for hunting

 the proposition of God 

 in the burning clouds, 

 in the invisible web 

 of air, in the one 

 petrified vowel of space.

 Your only hope now 

 is to not bear false witness

 against the sea, the unknowable

 scattershot of stars.

          for Jon Veinberg