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Classic and Contemporary Poetry


SCATTERED ALPHABET by JANE MILLER

First Line: OUR INITIAL FAITH IN THE WORLD, OUR FATHER, IF YOU WILL
Last Line: CARBONATE OOZE TO MONSOON.

Our initial faith in the world, our father, if you will,
was not true enough --
everything we lack takes on definition and form.
For example, on a hunt for our parent sun,
a whole day, a whole city involved,
there's a sense of overdoing it, a monotone,
and when we find it, no longer yellow -- never really --
looking at it, our headache is someone else's

collapse in space. I cease weeping
in the mornings -- mornings are now part of theater --
and when a planet roars by --
honestly,
space is a world of play, there's no reason
why it shouldn't be -- the continents wander like
huge rafts or lava-flows but without danger
of spilling since there's no down there's merely

five billion antecedents. There are substitutes
and assumptions where once there were summers
eating chicken and watermelon.
You are my brother when I write;
I kiss your face.

-- when I see you I remember living with you,
imitating you.

And when I try to dream another world,
a crystal of the continental crust -- you can imagine the bondage

of those for whom description is redemption --
my soul dwarfs
-- I know the future
is included --
that feverish afternoon
our brittle father and pretty mother
marry again,
carbonate ooze to monsoon.



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