In The Beginning
We are in the book of Correlations:
In the beginning was the Void
like a turn-down of nothingness.
In that pre-dream of Creation, all things
equally plausible, the Maker sees:
If creativity is the control
of chaos through expression, then Creation
could abridge inchoate Chaos itself.
In a blink He gives the Word, and the black Void
floods with the hot thought of light.
In beams of brightness daylight posts its coming,
its going in scenes for which Bach
might have writ the Oratorio.
In the gravity outlay that follows, He sorts through
great swirling masses of alliterate star matter.
A notorious perfectionist, He goes through
art gum erasers at a prodigious rate.
The sun He moves around like a flood lamp–
such heat and aspiration coming
from a dime-sized portion of the sky!
He notices the moon, how its light
transliterates the sun’s. He tries it in evening,
but the stars dim in its government.
He tries it in morning, but the blue
of astronauts shows through. Unable
to decide, He tries it from time to time.
But then He looks back, sees he missed a ball
of consequence, a planet in its heat and heart.
He paints it with water, makes it a water ball.
But in oceans alone He does not see
the sum of things. “I see strokes of reef
like brush strokes of incompletion,
I see good growing latitudes gone to waste.
Let there be marked volcanics. Let islands
of igneous intrusion rise in the surge,
a cave at a time. And now,” He says,
“let the rest flow in Anent, Adroit, Ajoint.”
With fructifying rain He greens whole continents.
In the complete fragrance of the original earth,
hand over hand for light, the whitest green
breaks through. Black boughs put on green flesh.
Mushrooms, almost meat, almost speak.
Grubs, all maw, bore the loam’s abundance.
The size of hands, birds populate the hills,
make the land loud with bird bluster,
the plural voice of the island thrush. Recumbent kine
He makes to rest their wrinkled butts in meadow grass.
At this, the sixth instanter of Creation,
He rests his case. It was risky.
It was successful. How could He but be pleased?
And He partakes of the deep rest that Sunday enjowls.
by John Barr
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