May 3, 2008

Today's poem is from Invasions, just published by Ivan R. Dee. Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.

Read more about this book.

Also on Poets.org

Related Poets
• Two Views
by Wyatt Prunty
• Morning News
by Marilyn Hacker

Related Prose
• A Brief Guide to New Formalism

To remove yourself from this list, please deselect the Poem-A-Day feature in your personal profile on Poets.org

Academy of American Poets
584 Broadway
Suite 604
New York, NY 10012
212-274-0343
academy@poets.org

Now that no one looking
by Adam Kirsch

Now that no one looking at the night-
Sky blanked by leakage from electric lamps
And headlights prowling through the parking lot
Could recognize the Babylonian dance
That once held every gazer; now that spoons
And scales, and swordsmen battling with beasts
Have decomposed into a few stars strewn
Illegibly across an empty space,
Maybe the old unfalsifiable
Predictions and extrapolated spheres
No longer need to be an obstacle
To hearing what it is the stars declare:
That there are things created of a size
We can't and weren't meant to understand,
As fish know nothing of the sun that writes
Its bright glyphs on the black waves overhead.