I wanted to walk outside and praise the stars, But David, my baby son, coughed and coughed. His comfort was more important than the stars So I comforted and kissed him in his dark Bedroom, but my comfort was not enough. His mother was more important than the stars So he cried for her breast and milk. It's hard For fathers to compete with mothers' love. In the dark, mothers illuminate like the stars! Dull and jealous, I was the smallest part Of the whole. I know this is stupid stuff But I felt less important than the farthest star As my wife fed my son in the hungry dark. How can a father resent his son and his son's love? Was my comfort more important than the stars? A selfish father, I wanted to pull apart My comfortable wife and son. Forgive me, Rough God, because I walked outside and praised the stars, And thought I was more important than the stars.
From Face by Sherman Alexie. Copyright © 2009 by Sherman Alexie. Used by permission of Hanging Loose Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
My husband says dark matter is a reality
not just some theory invented by adolescent computers
he can prove it exists and is everywhere
forming invisible haloes around everything
and somehow because of gravity
holding everything loosely together
the way a child wants to escape its parents
and doesn’t want to—what’s that—
we don’t know what it is but we know it is real
the way our mothers and fathers fondly
angrily followed fixed orbits around
each other like mice on a track
the way every human and every atom
rushes through space wrapped in its invisible
halo, this big shadow—that’s dark dark matter
sweetheart, while the galaxies
in the wealth of their ferocious protective bubbles
stare at each other
unable to cease
proudly
receding
Copyright © 2015 by Alicia Ostriker. Used with permission of the author.
Physics says: go to sleep. Of course you're tired. Every atom in you has been dancing the shimmy in silver shoes nonstop from mitosis to now. Quit tapping your feet. They'll dance inside themselves without you. Go to sleep. Geology says: it will be all right. Slow inch by inch America is giving itself to the ocean. Go to sleep. Let darkness lap at your sides. Give darkness an inch. You aren't alone. All of the continents used to be one body. You aren't alone. Go to sleep. Astronomy says: the sun will rise tomorrow, Zoology says: on rainbow-fish and lithe gazelle, Psychology says: but first it has to be night, so Biology says: the body-clocks are stopped all over town and History says: here are the blankets, layer on layer, down and down.
Copyright © 2007 by Albert Goldbarth. Reprinted from The Kitchen Sink: New and Selected Poems, 1972-2007 with the permission of Graywolf Press, Saint Paul, Minnesota.
Science explains nothing but holds all together as many things as it can count science is a basket not a religion he said a cat as big as a cat the moon the size of the moon science is the same as poetry only it uses the wrong words.
From May Day, published by Parsifal Press, Canada. Copyright © 2006 by Robert Kelly. Used by permission of the author.
Science! true daughter of Old Time thou art!
Who alterest all things with thy peering eyes.
Why preyest thou thus upon the poet’s heart,
Vulture, whose wings are dull realities?
How should he love thee? or how deem thee wise,
Who wouldst not leave him in his wandering
To seek for treasure in the jewelled skies,
Albeit he soared with an undaunted wing?
Hast thou not dragged Diana from her car,
And driven the Hamadryad from the wood
To seek a shelter in some happier star?
Hast thou not torn the Naiad from her flood,
The Elfin from the green grass, and from me
The summer dream beneath the tamarind tree?
This poem is in the public domain.
When I heard the learn’d astronomer,
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,
When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,
When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,
Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.
This poem is in the public domain.