2.18.2004

Cosmipoetics. From an article in Tuesday's NY Times science section:

As they try to figure out how this strange behavior could be happening to 
the universe today, astronomers say the ultimate prize from all the new observing
projects could be as simple as a single number.
That number, known as w, is the ratio between the pressure and density of
dark energy. . .


You could say that Stubborn Grew (or at least Bluejay's presence in) is about the pressure and density of dark energy. Here's Bluejay, intimating to unknowing Henry what he's about:

Hey!  C'mon Bluejay!  Live ain't over yet!  Let's go -
up to the Terrace! There's old Roger himself, up there!
Bluejay turned SE to see. Yeah, I see the ol bear.
He got up and shook himself - blood to flow


into his phosphoric, porous feet and hands -
and said: you know what you doin, Henry m'man?
You know you zigshaggin? Raven an zigshaggin
a sweetblack rizebury W, man - donch U? Unnerstan?



A what? Sho.


& then the letter "W" takes on a multivalent quality in many sections of the poem : a shorthand for Whitman or William Blackstone, a reflection of "M" (both Mandelstam & Dante's stellar icon for Justice in the Paradiso), & other things. Here's something toward the end of Forth of July as a whole:

         1



We are coming to the end of Henry
Navigator's long voyage, Elena –
circling around an elephant ear (Abul
Abaz, or Barnum's Jumbo) – see


how everything grows simpler,
more harsh, more true. Still
the well is always there (and will
be) – like the man standing here


beside it in the dark courtyard
(strange blooming out-of-season
almond branch). A stone,
a star, a well. A cup of water


from a rainbarrel (or Tartar
wine). A circling dragon-boat
or scrap of origami writ
folded to float so lightly... there.


You fold Andromeda into a W,
a mountain range back into M.
You cup them in your palm
to make a diamond, or double-


diamond – cat's eyes, Pushkinian.
Delicate Blue Morpho wings
woven with microscopic strings
of quipu thread (gentian-


gentle, violet, and red). A knit
crossroad, then – red, white –
streams into Cassiopeia's
mother-night (at last).


5.22.2000


(Cassiopeia being a constellation in the form of a "W", and linked mythologically with Ethiopia - another thread in the poem - source of Nile, "dark energy", Ark of Covenant legends, etc.).

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