Campbell McGrath - Nov 16, Iyengar III

For my one true evening class, stars caught my eye. When I saw “diacritical marks”, not a common reference in poetry, I was hooked. Read for my friend the talented Chant teacher, Linda Spackman, who uses diacritical marks all the time.

STARS

They possess an aspect as of gravity, as of the void

to fill which our hearts offer themselves

upon altars of moonlight.

The vastness and tinyness of existence

is like a holy text writ upon a grain of rice, or a star.

The way attention skitters from light on wineglasses

table to table resembles them, as too

a bossa nova symphony of bassoons and slide guitar.

The loneliness of atoms is astonishing,

like the sight of stars from a vessel at sea.

The night retains textures and empathies

that might be signals from angels or distant stars,

and the trees assume dream-shapes

we do not recognize and can never truly know.

Stars are but diacritical marks

upon the night's cosmological syntax.

We are human, and our form is a corruption of starlight

poured like heavy syrup into soft-skinned molds,

like decorative soaps, or candles.

Like the stars we burn fiercely, reluctantly,

as a dragon consumes its golden hoard.

Of my eyes, of my skin, the stars shall know nothing.

-Campbell McGrath