SPRING MUSINGS

by Martin Elster



A hundred thousand million galaxies
in motley clusters rapidly receding
from one another — like a bunch of bees
repelled by tainted nectar they’d been eating —
is a sure sign the cosmos is inflating,
as is the vocal structure of the frog
now calling out across the water, waiting,
as patient as the shadows in this bog.
With every croak, his throat must grow then shrink.
But will that happen to the universe?
Well, you can speculate and muse and think
and theorize and wonder and immerse
your thoughts in such abstract considerations
while I sit listening to frog vibrations.


Martin Elster, author of There’s a Dog in the Heavens!, serves as percussionist for the Hartford Symphony Orchestra and is a composer; his poetry has appeared in numerous literary magazines and anthologies.

APOCALYPTIC LULLABY

by Richard O'Connell

After "Apocalipse" by Domingos Carvalho Da Silva*

Video: "Apocalypse Lullaby" by The Wailin' Jennys, from their 2006 album, Firecracker.

             
Because the moon is bright and the night
Is simply announcing the dawn
And because the sea is hardly the sea
And the hose doesn't weep on the lawn

And because we've fouled the water and air
In this best of all possible hells
And because the light is simply a vibration
That excites our nervous cells

And because rock music hurts our ears
And the wind plays an aeolian harp
And because the earth breeds plenty of snakes
And goldfish are only carp

And because the plane is about to depart
And the raven repeats nevermore
And because we have to sit here and smile
Before the final big encore

And  because yesterday does not exist
And the future will never come
And because we are doing a ballet
On the pin of the Hydrogen Bomb

Let's not rush to the wall and weep
And tear our hair and bewail our fate
We did as well as anyone could
Given our love and hate

And because we are pathetic clowns
Confronting the Apocalypse
Caught in the ruins of a collapsing world
Between earthquake and eclipse

Let's dance high on the hurricane deck
Before the ship slopes under our feet
Let's soak up the wealth of the sun
Before it loses its light and heat

Let's laugh at the whole wide universe
In our eyes reflected
When we close our lids it will be
As if it never existed

Let our laughter crackle across the cosmos
Where galaxies scatter and dim
Since win or lose we only leave
A trace of ash on the wind


*Domingos Carvalho Da Silva,  prominent  Brazilian modernist poet (1915-2004).


Richard O'Connell lives in Deerfield Beach, Florida. Collections of his poetry include RetroWorlds, Simulations, Voyages, and The Bright Tower, all published by the University of Salzburg Press (now Poetry Salzburg). His poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, National Review, The Paris Review, Trinacria, Measure, Acumen, The Formalist, etc.