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
From Pieces of Air in the Epic by Brenda Hillman. Copyright © 2005 by Brenda Hillman. Reprinted with permission of Wesleyan University Press.
Author
Brenda Hillman

Brenda Hillman is the author of ten poetry collections, including In a Few Minutes Until Later (Wesleyan University Press, 2022) and 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