The Multiverse

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by Andrew Wynn Owen


  In internecine changes,

  A trail

  Of rage that churns and rearranges,

  Careless of what old promises it tossed

  Entail,

  When elsewhere, seven continents, they eye

  These shores not for advice

  But how

  To tweak democracy’s device

  So progress-hungry engines may not die,

  The prow

  Of some celestial future breaks time’s mists,

  Revealing, holy glitch,

  Our urge

  To thrive and understand, on which

  Both tea-leaf readers and economists

  Converge;

  And silently out of the loins of lions,

  As when moon-lander’s gold

  First glimmered,

  Fall knowledges that will not fold,

  A froth of truth the tireless seas of ions

  Have simmered.

  Mirrors and Windows

  It must have seemed sheer miracle to some,

  This surreptitious surface, plane of pure return,

  Enough to drive a number-cruncher numb

  When wall-to-wall, no less

  Than infinite regress

  Till pellmell light reluctantly

  Rips though the cloth of stern

  Reality.

  A window, though,

  Shows more than any mirror.

  Pervasive happening opens space

  And lets free landscape flow

  Through challenge, change, fresh seasons

  Into a stadium built to withstand error.

  It is a plastic garrison, a hallowed place,

  A realm for clarifying rules and reasons.

  Beside the heaped Pacific, San Francisco,

  I looked to where saltwater vanished in clear sky

  As some survivor from the age of disco

  Danced with a shaggy hound

  On bolstered seawall, sound

  Of high-hat quavers everywhere.

  Outmoded, but this guy

  Just didn’t care.

  There are these views

  We get of other lives,

  Insights, illusions, sidelong glances:

  Passers-by, morning news,

  Moments of shy confession

  From desperate strangers met in deadbeat dives,

  As though the universe were improvising chances

  For decoherence, possible concession.

  A mirror won’t relent but windows will,

  Hence Perseus faced Medusa with a polished shield.

  Reflection’s failsafe fallback is the still

  Expanse of certainty

  That taught its cult to be

  Detached from unreflective things,

  Which yet will never yield

  Till pigs grow wings.

  Meanwhile the wide

  Enduring window stares,

  Nothing to shatter but a pane.

  Utopia drifts outside,

  And unexpected dreams:

  Spiralling helicopters, New Age fairs,

  Beliefs that feel like disbelief. Then pelting rain,

  Tall towers, drenched wells, life splitting at the seams.

  The Chair

  I wasn’t quite persuaded by the chair

  But there

  It was. I sat and thought,

  Lost in a trance,

  About its stance:

  Its foursquare force, its mode of holding court.

  I pictured other chairs in distant rooms,

  Where brooms

  Could never do enough

  To sweep the dust

  That made a crust

  Of skin-flakes grafted over sticky fluff.

  Then, leaning forward, I imagined cells

  With bells

  Muffled by mossy floor.

  A space where bees

  Flew at their ease

  Between lush vines entwining every door.

  This vision shifted to a wide salon.

  There, on

  A woven carpet, stood

  One silent monk

  Who smiled and sunk

  Into the pattern, and was gone for good.

  Last, tilting back, I glimpsed a molten cave.

  Sense save

  Us all: it packed a smell

  Of rotten flesh,

  Some old, some fresh.

  I realised, with a jolt, I sat in hell.

  Breathless, I stood, and found myself at home,

  A chrome

  Laptop flashing on.

  The windows wide.

  Sunlight outside.

  A cup. A plant. A toy automaton.

  The Green, The Grey, The Gold

  Unicorn frappuccini, Angry Birds,

  And virtual reality –

  The Green are lost, but not for words.

  Such is the compass of commodity.

  Content providers

  Torrent their facepalms to the cloud,

  While old-time law-abiders

  Miss loopholes no netsploiter ever disavowed.

  But slow, before they see, the Green become the Grey.

  Vast databanks are superseded,

  And summers waltz away.

  For them, no consolation

  But seeing, plainly, they conceded

  To ash damnation

  Before their hand

  Was even dealt, before their fire was fanned.

  Elsewhere, the Gold, clear-eyed, resilient to the last,

  Insist on living

  Inevitably well, forgiving

  In every way but what you might expect:

  They cannot bear to talk or think about the past,

  Nor ever hear it said

  That they’d respect

  Those dupes they tore their mantle from, the silver dead.

  The Green dissent. Their static podcasts blare.

  Noise-cancelling headphones close their ears

  To any fact that sounds unfair.

  They fictionalise their most revealing fears

  And play the game

  Of Avatars, replacing skin

  With some outlandish name,

  ‘Oedipa30’, say, or ‘ManicJokersGrin’.

  The Grey, aware of water rising round their homes,

  Of sand that slithers through the hourglass,

  Hide in protective domes,

  Adjust their expectations,

  And come to terms with being powerless.

  No explorations

  Of alien seas

  Haunt their retirement. They aren’t Ulysses.

  Meanwhile, the stubborn Gold, who never seem to age,

  Or trip, or blink,

  Perch stonily on thrones and think

  Of limit, language, courage, sot, and sod.

  They are, to tell the truth, now petrified and rage

  Against the sketchy deals

  They did with God,

  Who saddled them with all those high abstruse ideals.

  The Shoal

  As filament desires electric flair,

  Rapids gargle for tussling shoals of fish

  And forests churn for wind.

  Meanwhile, contemplative, a goat will glare

  Up at a hawk, but not with any wish.

  And what would scallops, tinned

  Within their shells, request?

  A freedom built on land,

  Which they can’t understand?

  That must be wrong. That surely isn’t best.

  All living earthlings long to do is move

  Within their element, a freedom forged

  By calliper and scale.

  Impelled by winds that scintillate and soothe,

  They tack by ancient programmings which gorged

  The channels where they sail.

  The dragon and the saint

  Are children of a star

  And will be what they are,

  With jigsaw sureness and without complaint.

  It is not lac
k of freedom not to swim

  Like whales or swoop like eagles. Humankind

  Evolved to soar in thought:

  A knowledge that we loom within and limn

  With machinating smoke-and-mirror mind.

  A net we catch, are caught,

  And re-invented by

  Goes trawling through our cells,

  Is pushed in and impels

  The airy laws our acts solidify.

  As weavers, weather-guessers, number-gods,

  Could anything be more evasive than

  A freedom misapplied,

  A restless lust to lean against the odds

  And spin our borders out beyond their span?

  Too many, thus, have died.

  Epitomised, that is

  Wall-walking Helen’s son,

  Divine Euphorion

  Who chased a groundless and egregious bliss.

  Sure, there’s a known condition, worse by far:

  To underleap is to mislive the most.

  Since effort is our task,

  We aim the rocket and observe the star.

  Since we are matter’s guest, and not its host,

  What more could nature ask?

  Look sharp: in every spree

  And effervescent swish,

  The muddled salmon wish

  To be conscripted in eternity.

  The Fisherman

  ‘Come follow me,’ he said, ‘and I’ll show you how to fish for people.’

  Common English Bible, Matthew 4.19

  Slow morning. Fish were taking their sweet time.

  Sunrise surprised me, as it often can,

  With impish motey streaks.

  Bethsaida blurred, receding, home of tomb

  And temple. Air was energetic, clean.

  With choppy strokes

  Past heron, swallows,

  Softly we skiffed across

  Each undulating crease.

  A greener depth replaced the glistening shallows.

  Peter was leaning out to cast his net

  While I, daydreaming, watched saltwater’s ruptured

  Mirror. Remembrances

  Spiralled. Mosaic of fractals. Passion’s knot

  Revolving. Tell me, have you been enraptured

  By moments, mess,

  The weathervane

  Of who and why we are?

  It is a source of awe

  I’ve always felt. It ripens on the vine.

  When in Achaea, I saw triumphal arches,

  Rough gateways that the Romans built to mark

  Dominion here and there.

  Their aqueducts loom in the farthest reaches,

  Such is their industry, their lust to make –

  In distant Tyre,

  Phoenician Acre,

  And down the restless coast

  Where hundreds like us cast

  Quick lines and chant. The usual. Beaches echo.

  But when I turned and saw him, all things changed.

  The rumoured mercy of this riddled world

  Shone clear. A sudden lift,

  Sun crinkled through the branches. Birdsong chimed

  With water’s slosh. Dispersing, clouds ran wild.

  Unruly light,

  Having no heed

  Of death’s deranging bite,

  Enveloped sea and boat.

  No halo framed that love-extolling head

  Yet tender fury tumbled from its nod,

  As if amphorae and sarcophagus

  Were nothing in his scheme.

  That gesture said the maker had no need

  For power, how living’s caustic struggle goes.

  Sea quaked. Did some

  Vast bird rush over?

  Then all was crystal still

  And sunlight filled our sail.

  I had the feeling this could last forever.

  So many things we see but do not notice:

  Crisp bracken, insect wings, the minuscule

  Courageous sapling shoots.

  Balance is nestled by the stalks of nettles,

  A dock-leaf’s balm. The rearing mountain’s call

  To chase new heights

  Can soothe old feuds

  And, though we honour towers,

  Flatlands are glories too,

  Tousled or tussocky, bud-crowded fields.

  Once, rambling by the beach, he seized my arm,

  A look like nothing earthly in his eyes,

  And whispered, ‘We are one,

  Dear brother, with the same unswerving aim.

  The plan is real and Satan’s cruellest ice

  Can’t hurt. Life’s throne

  Persists, and all

  Is as it’s meant to be.

  The boat, the sky, the bay –

  Love is our lamp and every soul the oil.’

  What was his purpose, truly? You have seen.

  The stone is rolled away, and here we stand.

  Don’t fear the wilderness:

  Dry wind, moon chill, heat shivers – each a sign

  Voracious heaven sent to leave us stunned.

  Voluminous

  Reality

  Advances in our cause

  And here are all the clues:

  Love makes a bond no discord can untie.

  God is a name for saying what we guess

  Deep laws that underwrite our world are doing.

  Believe me when I say

  I thought that truth would always be disguised

  Until I saw sure proof of this undying

  Mystery: the sea

  Buoyed up his feet

  And, unexpected marvel,

  The liquid held like marble.

  When miracles occur, why should we fight?

  It is not finished, no, and it may never.

  Some stories have beginnings but no end.

  I cannot now forget

  How fierce he was, unwearying renewer.

  That certainty, that moving stillness, and

  The gentle gait

  Which, when I look

  At any rocking keel,

  Is conjured. I recall

  The day that Yeshua walked across a lake.

  The Slow Steal

  No wonder there’d be scuffle, tussle, risk,

  Snares in the longer grass,

  Restlessness, wistfulness, time’s whisk –

  But hidden from my theories

  Lurked the slow steal, the leaching, every lurch that wearies.

  This also came to pass.

  Later a coffin (woah there, do not trip)

  And lesser repercussions

  Of curveball bleared mortality

  Would stir discussions

  Far down in me

  About hope’s fissures, furrows, slide and slip.

  So the slow steal, the trudging waste, persisted,

  The gradual drift from grace.

  It made me marvel: what had twisted?

  What’s down and where true up?

  If all will seep like coffee from a punctured cup,

  Have we no holding place?

  Then love’s abandonment, a loss supreme

  And stark because

  Believed, while in it, like a dream

  Which only doubt can break.

  And who would wish (sure, even if it was)

  Heaven a fake?

  As failings, falterings, withered saplings piled

  Like bottles at my door,

  I shivered with thick autumn mist.

  I was not more

  Or less, but missed

  Lost flow, flown frenzy, freedom of the child.

  Yet when rose petals fell, they blazed like portals,

  Compelled belief

  In better realms. The real immortals

  Are sculptors of delight

  Who, by removing, move. Our journey’s brief

  But, trust, it’s bright.

  The Painter’s Honeymoon

  on seeing the painting by Frederic Leighton
/>   Released at last from boyhood’s ritual trials,

  The painter is alone –

  Not solo but aligned

  With one

  Whose nearness makes the travelling pencil’s trails

  More mobile

  And accurate

  Than any would have thought

  Achievable

  In this brief life

  Which doubt’s redoubling muddle

  And danger’s threat

  Dog with their blue

  Immensity. But now all’s right

  And, twin, they blend, co-orbital in love.

  Meshed flecks of highlight on the dress’s folds

  Reach to her sunlit mind,

  Which tilts to countermand

  A mood

  Of shy retreat that roves his face’s fields.

  If sadness

  Ever unselved

  Those features, no one now

  Could ascertain

  Its nature – and

  Besides, to see the sun-dance

  That hails their new

  Conjoinment (twine

  Of fingers, souls) is to have solved

  Life’s crux: its launch-pad, calm, and happy end.

  Convenience and Inconvenience

  In one world, sure, they’ll solve the crisis but

  That’s not our path here, is it? Look

  About you: kicking back, we shut

  That door long past. And since our kind forsook

  Forest, the red

  Flower incandescent at our fingers,

  All trees have wished us dead,

  Incapable of rest till nothing human lingers.

  Tough call, I guess, if you’ve invested well in oil.

  It hardly matters

  To some when others’ lifeblood spatters

  Carfronts – ‘That’s what a windscreen-wiper’s for.’

  ‘To care for nature sounds too much like beastly toil.’

  These days now, blue or red,

  High or low, more

  Humans don’t give a fig what happens when they’re dead.

  To catechise our failings: we’ve been cold,

 

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