There will be no leaping this year. Poetry
And arias have so long reversed the currents
Of the world. It was they who were the sirens
And muses, the jinns, devils, angels, talking
Animals, serpents with or without legs,
With or without coils or wings—they, words
And music, who tempted, lured, seduced us,
Not the silent cliffs, not the voice-like winds
Winding around down in the canyons, not
Even the little birds, communicating to birds,
After all, and only to conspecifics, not to us,
Not in words. Narrative spread the tapestry,
Raised the tents and pennants, our colorful,
Entropy-defying, glorious, richly detailed,
Wishful pasts superimposed over crumbling
Landscapes only capable of breaking down
And breaking us. The rocks were never wily,
Nor inhabited by their own echoes, nor
Entirely innocent. It was the song, ourselves,
Who animated nearly static backdrops and
Rendered death ecstatic in tumbling cantos
Of vatic verses. And all so we would disperse
Them, the new kind of hunger hidden in them,
Unknown before our bone flutes, dancing
Singers, paintings in caves, cuts on stones.
Beyond where any animal hunger could linger,
Much less be fed, the outer edges of words
And music now continually extend, our pasts
Projected past our deaths, our golden songs
On the Voyager discs, our compressed
Lunar library carried by the lander, Beresheet.
Beresheet, the beginning keeps beginning
Again. But there will be no leaping this year.
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