String Theory Sutra

There are so many types of
“personal” in poetry. The “I” is	a needle some find useful, though
the thread, of course, is shadow.
In writing of experience or beauty,	a cloth emerges as if made
from a twin existence. It's July
4: air is full of mistaken	stars & the wiggly half-zeroes stripes
make when folded into fabric meant
never to touch ground ever again—	the curved cloth of Sleeping Beauty
around 1310, decades after the spinning
wheel gathered stray fibers in a	whir of spindles before the swath
of the industrial revolution, & by
1769 a thread stiff enough for	the warp of cotton fabric from
the spinning frame, the spinning jenny,
the spinning "mule" or muslin wheel,	which wasn't patented. By its, I
mean our, for we would become
what we made. String theory posits	no events when it isn't a
metaphor; donuts twists in matter—10
to the minus 33 cm—its	inverted fragments like Bay Area poetry—
numbers start the world for grown-ups
& wobbly fibers, coaxed from eternity,	are stuffed into stems of dates
like today so the way people
are proud of their flag can	enter the pipes of a 4.
Blithe astonishment in the holiday music
over the picnickers: a man waves	from his spandex biking outfit, cloth
that both has & hasn't lost
its nature. Unexpected folds are part	of form where our park is
kissed by cucalyptus insect noises ^^z-
z~ ~> crr, making that for you	Flag cloth has this singing quality.
Airline pilots wear wool blend flag
ties from Target to protect their	hearts. Women, making weavings of
unicorns in castles, hummed as they sewed
spiral horns with thread so real	it floated; such artists were visited
by figures in beyond-type garments so
they could ask how to live.	It’s all a kind of seam.
Flying shuttles, 1733, made weaving like
experience, full of terrible accidents &	progress. Flags for the present war
were made in countries we bombed
in the last war. By we	you mean they. By you it
means the poem. By it I
mean meanings which hang tatters of	dawn’s early light in wrinkled sections of
the druid oak with skinny linguistic
branches, Indo-European roots & the	weird particle earth spirits. A voice
came to me in a dream
beyond time: love, we are your	shadow thread ~ ~ A little owl
with stereo eyes spoke over my
head. I am a seamstress for	the missing queen. The unicorn can’t
hear. It puts its head on
our laps. Fibers, beauty at a	low level, fabric styles, the cottage
industry of thought. Threads inspired this
textile picnic: the satin ponytail holder,	the gauze pads inside Band-Aids,
saris, threads of the basketball jersey,
turbans, leis over pink shorts, sports	bras: A young doctor told us
—he’s like Chekhov, an atheist believer
in what’s here —that sometimes, sitting	with his dying patients, he says,
“God bless you.” It seems to
help somewhat. They don’t know what	causes delays between strings—by they,
I mean the internet. Turns out
all forces are similar to gravity.	We searched for meaning ceaselessly. By
we I mean we. Sewed it
us-wards, with flaws between strings.	It seems there is no revolution
in the Planck scale. My sisters
& I worked for the missing	queen: she said: be what you
aren’t. A paradox. There are some
revolutions: rips in matter, the bent	nots inside our fabric whirred &
barely mattered anymore. Our art
could help take vividness to people	but only if they had food.
No revolution helped the workers, ever,
very long. We worked on this	or that flag after sewing this
or that unicorn. They called Trotsky
back from Canada. Tribes were looser than	nations, nations did some good
but not so very always, &
the types of personal in art	turned & turned. Nylon parachutes in
1937. Lachesis. We shall not flag
nor fail, wrote Churchill. O knight,	tie our scarf on your neck.
There are more than two ways
to make beauty so movements end	like sutras or horizons, somewhat frayed.
Je est un autre wrote Rimbaud
the gun-runner. Over & inner &	code. The unicorn, c’est moi. The
rips by which the threads are
tethered to their opposites like concepts	of an art which each example
will undo. We spoke of meanings.
I, it, we, you, he, they	am, is, are sick about America.
Colors forgive flags—red as the
fireskirt of the goddess Asherah, white
as the gravity behind her eye,
blue for the horizon unbuttoned so	the next world can get through.
The “thin thread of calculable continuity”
Santayana refers to —it’s not a	choice between art & life, we
know this now, but still: How
shall we live? O shadow thread.	After the cotton workers’ lockout 1922
owners cut back sweatshop hours to
44 per week. In string theory	the slippage between string & theory
makes air seem an invented thing
& perhaps it is, skepticism mixed	with fear that since nothing has
singular purpose, we should not act.
To make reality more bearable for	some besides ourselves? There’s a moment
in Southey’s journal when the tomb
is opened & the glow-beast exits—	right when the flying shuttle has
revolutionized their work—by their I
mean our —& cut costs by	half. So lines are cut to
continue them & if you do
help the others, don’t tell. String theory	posits symmetry or weight. My country
’tis of installing provisional governments.
Why was love the meaning thread.	Textiles give off tiny singing no
matter what: washable rayon, airport
carpets, checked flannel smocks of nurses,	caps, pillowcases, prom sashes, & barbecue
aprons with insignias or socks people
wear before/during sexual thrills after	dark subtitled Berkeley movies next to
t-shirts worn by crowds in raincoats.
Human fabric is dragged out, being	is sewn with terror or awe
which is also joy. Einstein called mystery
of existence “the fundamental emotion.”	Remember? You unraveled in childhood till
you were everything. By everything I mean
everything . The unicorn puts its head	on your lap; from there it
sees the blurry edge. How am
I so unreal & yet my	thread is real it asks sleepily~~

Credit

Author

Brenda Hillman

Brenda Hillman is the author of ten poetry collections, including Extra Hidden Life, among the Days (Wesleyan University Press, 2018). She received the Academy of American Poets Fellowship in 2012 and currently serves as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.

Date Published: 2005-01-01

Source URL: https://poets.org/poem/string-theory-sutra