A World of Questions About Forever
Poem - by Baruch November
Look above:
Is that a charm of hummingbirds raising infinite ladders
through the hourglass nebula?
Is that an old man who won’t make it to the end
of this question?
That must be a chandelier made of great stolen spirals of
the Andromeda galaxy.
That must be an archangel listening to Leonard Cohen
on an impossibly long wave radio.
That must be the glorious end of a dream inside a dream
about sleeping without dreaming.
Is that the sound of thunder apologizing for waking
that little village?
Is that lightning turned inside out so that
it strikes darkly?
Nobody knows—yet all the oceans insist
on washing yesterday
onto the pebbled shore in the shape
of sandalwood and shipwrecks
that can’t be reassembled
to form a single answer
for any of the questions
no one knows how
to ask yet about forever,
as this world is falling
forever into the pocket
of abstraction.