Radiation

Here's a piece from a very good friend of mine, the Irish poet John Lyons, inspired by Louis Zukofsky.


Louis Zukofsky

Radiation he said
We are consumers of radiation
Of varying wavelengths
But radiation nonetheless
Energy that vibrates
That travels
through space and time
as we too
are bound by those coordinates
for all eternity
unless the mass of the universe
is to disappear:
nitrogen and carbon
omega 3,
and the simplicity
of the title he gave
to his life’s work
A
A poem
A vitamin
An assault
On the first letter
On the mathematics
of meaning
So much depends
We are told
Upon the creation
Of Henry Adams
And Adam Smith
Upon random specifics
Upon a throw
Of nature’s dice
An emphatically
Musical note
Sounding throughout
The pages
Literate
In every sense
Truth enfabled
The tortoise
And the hare
No sop to the cultured
Borges pre-imagined
In the myriad infinities
Of the alphabet
Though it takes objects
To people oblivion
Workers in the vineyard
That most literary
Of parables.
Radiation
He said
As though he were
Composing pages
Of uranium,
Poetry
To blow the mind.


John Lyons