By Peter Cole
Either the world is coming together,
or else the world is falling apart —
here — now — along these letters,
against the walls of every heart.
Today, tomorrow, within its weather,
the end or beginning’s about to start —
the world impossibly coming together
or very possibly falling apart.
Now the lovers’ mouths are open —
maybe the miracle’s about to start:
the world within us coming together,
because all around us it’s falling apart.
Even as they speak, he wonders,
even as the fear departs:
Is that the world coming together?
Can they keep it from falling apart?
The image, gradually, is growing sharper;
now the sound is like a dart:
It seemed their world was coming together,
but in fact it was falling apart.
That’s the nightmare, that’s the terror,
that’s the Isaac of this art —
which sees that the world might come together
if only we’re willing to take it apart.
The dream, the lure, is the prayer’s answer,
which can’t be plotted on any chart —
as we know the world that’s coming together
without our knowing is falling apart.
Source: Poetry (April 2013)
Poet Bio
More Poems about Arts & Sciences
Poem with Human Intelligence
This century is younger than me.
It dresses itself
in an overlong coat of Enlightenment thinking
despite the disappearing winter.
It twirls the light-up fidget spinner
won from the carnival of oil economies.
In this century, chatbots write poems
where starlings wander from their murmuration
into the denim-thick...
Listening in Deep Space
We've always been out looking for answers,
telling stories about ourselves,
searching for connection, choosing
to send out Stravinsky and whale song,
which, in translation, might very well be
our undoing instead of a welcome.
We launch satellites, probes, telescopes
unfolding like origami, navigating
geomagnetic storms, major disruptions.
Rovers...