Welcome to Eureka Street

back to site

ARTS AND CULTURE

The consolation of cosmology

  • 17 August 2021
Selected poems

The consolation of cosmology

From time to time, the fluctuation doesn’t produce

a Big Bang, it just re-creates last Tuesday…

                                                —Katie Mack

We’re not talking here of

those domestic incidents in the home

that can really spoil your day

(the toaster no longer toasting

for instance) though home won’t be so

particularly inviting anyway

when the whole universe ends.

Katie Mack knows about these things

and we should take notice:

‘These terms like Heat Death, Big Rip

and Vacuum Decay don’t sound

all that inviting.’

She’s understating it. Heat Death

will be absolute cold comfort for anyone

who makes it that far

whereas the Big Rip would be

like splitting the backside of your jeans

albeit on a cosmic scale.

Death-bubbles in Vacuum Decay

could be quite a thing, gobbling up all

substance into the void

into that nothing which really is

a thing to be avoided. It could happen

anytime now. ‘The end is nigh’

a sandwich-board man declares.

Katie Mack says: ‘There’s something

about acknowledging

the impermanence of existence

that is a little bit freeing.’

This is perhaps a bit of poetic license.

It could be poetic justice.

Though not really poetic, Arthur Dent

would say, looking nervously

at the calendar. Not really

anything to write home about, in fact…

Katie Mack might give notice

but the universe is indifferent.

So just get a cup of tea and sandwich,

settle in for the main event.

the send-off

no longer the man he was

he is now more or less changed forever

already so much younger

in the minds of friends outside the church

as we narrate him to each other

all those stories that form the last hurrah

as time and its operations turn his body

into detritus and words

as we speak of someone we once knew

have lost and maybe found

the words drift over the graveyard

like butterflies

something lies dead in the hedge

and informs us so

the usual blackbirds

chip at the edges of dusk

Southern China 2014

Yangshuo

from my third-floor hotel balcony I could reach out

almost to touch the mountain

it seems such a good neighbour

when I walk out by the Li River

the mountain follows me / shadowing my footsteps

I watch the river-boats working

their ways across the current towards night-moorings

the fisherman homeward-bound with his cormorants

in the street the rows of stalls flutter with

silks / with kites and flags / with shawls and dresses

dusk is burdened by the gathering monsoon

redolent of fruit and fish and flesh and tobacco smoke

back at the hotel with Mike the porter

drinking baijiu sweetened with osmanthus flowers

our laughter and the full moon echo down the corridor

later that night the mountain silently enters my room

and kneels at my bedside

I lean my drunken head into its flank

street artist