From Pluriverse

        Ernesto Cardenal

                        Translated by John Lyons

 

 

The puddle in the street is very dirty

but in the puddle there is a clean sky

and in the sky an auraucaria.

         "Beauty is not accidental in nature".

Beauty is functional, and its function is beauty.

Beauty is functional, it is to be seen.

The beautiful parts of feathers are the visibles parts

not the hidden parts.

      Tigers

are beautiful on the outside.

The viscerae are monotonous.

 

The heron brings songs, say the Bora.

It inspires songs and praises.

The air was also for the trill and flight of birds.

The beauty of animals in the face of which

Darwin's hypothesis of sexual selection

they say, is insufficient.

        "Were nature not beautiful . . . " (Poincaré)

The Kosmos Kosmetico (beautiful) according to Justinian.

And we are created to be satisfied according to Justinian.

St Justinian.

Although now the unjust oppress us.

      "If God were with you, Justinian,

      the unjust would not oppress you".

Kosmetico, despite neoliberalism.

Which is why Heisenberg has said

that the universe is composed not of matter or energy

but of music.

 

 

How many times from the sand have we gazed at the horizon.

But the cosmos has a horizon ever closer.

The transcendence is ever closer.

"Is there much distance between man and Heaven?"

they asked in the Ming dynasty.

The extremities come together and the infinitely far

is infinitely close.

Evolution and transcendence: there's no difference.

An earth which aspires to join with heaven.

And a God not only of ontological functions

and not involved in any revolution.

The universe an as yet unfinished process

and we an interval in that process.

     We are like someone who travels in a train.

     We see everything we pass

     but don't know what's coming.

     So in curved space-time                                  

     turning round and round the sun

     but each revolution in a new year.

To see further ahead, further back in the past.

How was order born from chaotic Big Bang?  

 

 

On this still hot planet.

And fire within. If not, take a peek into the Masaya volcano.

And its centre hotter than the surface of the sun.

The evolution of a star till it becomes a girl.

Entropy is anti-evolution.

And when all's said it doesn't exist.

New Man and New Woman is a biological event.

Bodies of elemental particles and fields of energy

and souls that don’t exist alone but only as something bigger.

All matter is united according to Bohm.

So won't souls be even more so?

Spiritual body and bodily spirit.

The boy and girl on a corner,

outside the pharmacy, and amid the taxi horns

he asked: "What's your name?"

In Madrid, under the neon of the Mary pharmacy:

      "What's your name?"

In every meeting of two the universe is united.

 

For information on how to order Ernesto Cardenal’s Cosmic Canticle follow this link.

 

 

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