What's in a star? Ourselves.
All the elements of our body and of the planet
were in the entrails of a star.
We are stardust.
15,000,000,000 years ago we were a mass
of hydrogen floating in space, slowly rotating, dancing.
And the gas condensed more and more
gaining ever more mass
and mass became star and began to shine.
As they condensed they grew hot and bright.
Gravitation generated thermal energy: light and heat.
Like saying love.
They were born, grew and died, the stars.
And the galaxy gradually took on the form of a flower
as we now see it on starry nights.
Our flesh and our bones come from other stars
and perhaps even from other galaxies,
we are universal,
and after death we will contribute to form other stars
and other galaxies.
We come from the stars and to them we shall return.
Men who shaped Man or rather will.
Or the prospect before us is merely a barren planet like Mars.
A mushroom-shaped cloud slowly rising I on the horizon...
Star Wars which the Wall Street Journal called -Dollars falling from the skies."
Neanderthal Wall Street Io urnal But no. We have' for example
evolution from the primitive shark until it transforms into dove. Man's death instinct
is not inherited from animal ancestors.
Biology also teaches:
natural selection favours peace-loving animals.
Murderous groups within a same species do not prosper.
(Somozas, Pinochet, etc.)
Basically composed of bacteria.”
Descendants of single-celled creatures still to be found in any drop of water,
Cephalopoda, vertebrates, vermiforms,
the one from Assisi called them brothers before the
Origin of the Species.
To believers in an author of evolution, that is
in a Creator, it's strange to us to see it making mistakes
creating creatures with a dead-end.
A premeditated evolutionary path? In reality, no.
But rectifying in hindsight.
Rectifying for example a defective air bladder.
Likewise reversibilities of evolution. Even
in human society. Even in the revolution.
Also living fossils in the depths of the sea,
the case of the crossopterygii, or in the White House.
Likewise Christian-Democrats, left or right wing,
and those whose paws and wings changed back to fins.
We are not only product of the process but the process
and responsible for the process being free from it.
There's a theory that the chimpanzee is ex-human. Out of fear
he regressed from man.
Will artificial intelligence be the next stage?
Silica beings superior to human beings of carbon?
We've already programmed computers to think.
Unlike us
an error once committed they will never repeat.
That's how they can beat us at chess.
Robots have freely ventured forth to explore the Solar System.
Those who at present answer, will they one day be able to ask?
Are we humans mere machines
to manufacture machines better than ourselves?
Their information one day will be vaster than ours.
Will they then have consciousness or even emotions?
And reproduction even without love?
Will we be able, in the event of danger, to unplug them in time?
Our teeth have their origin in sharks
but later as mammals we acquired lips that could suck
and because of those lips that could suck we acquired kisses.
The opening of the mouth 1,000 million years ago,
in those waters,
400 million years ago teeth,
red lips merely two or three million ago.
Having climbed out of the trees
the tall grasses forced him to stand up.
Like someone casting a bottle into the sea, we have launched
our messages beyond the solar system.
If they don't have radio, we can't detect them with radio.
Perhaps the civilization perished millions of years ago
but their mechanical descendants have remained,
a world of robots.
Perhaps we're alone in the whole galaxy
but there are thousands of millions of galaxies.
What we've seen of the works of God is scarcely a spark
says Ecclesiasticus, and there are many larger mysteries
“for we have seen but few of his works."
Perhaps they are so advanced
that they'll show us how to cure all illnesses,
or at least how not to blow the planet to pieces.
Perhaps they've seen our television programs
An inter-stellar trip? It's very expensive now
says Thomas R. McDonough,
but maybe a thousand years from now it won't be.
Of the (short wave) pulsation of pulsars Frank Drake says:
“If they are intelligent signals they're from a stupid civilization.”
An aerial picked up a mysterious message from the depths of the universe,
in Newark, but it turned out to be a truck in the street.
Myriads of thought particles
which will be a single thought on a sidereal scale.
What colors will they see? Will they talk or sing?
What religion or religions will they profess,
or could it be something we'd not recognize as religion?
The extra-terrestrials, just how strange will they be?
Can they be anything other than like us?
Space and time we have in common.
Won't the extra-terrestrials be as terrestrial as us?
Certainly they'll have an economy.
They may also have their own Crucified Man.
Planets perhaps where the atmosphere is methane
and the sky is green.
Perhaps other types of biology with different chemical bases.
The galaxy Virgo A
comprises maybe 10 trillion stars.
Only explicable by a love beyond measure.
And all the astronomers in all those galaxies
and poets too with cosmic canticles.
Universe dwellers.
Standing before my hut in Solentiname I urinate
gazing at the stars.
The earth from Mars must be luminous like Mars.
And how beautiful we would see our galaxy from outside of it.
From that flickering point of light, I sing to you:
Love, creator of the stars.
Anti the war
and pro the war
is the candidate
(Nixon)
Where they may be against the war, against.
Wherever in favor, in favor.
Yes and no, said Nixon.
(Because politicians have to be flexible.)
-Shall we or shan't we support this program?
-Lees say yes in the marginal districts,
where we know we're ahead let's say no—
said Nixon.
"Creating an image," and it's created through language.
For politics is a question of language.
Slippery in ambiguity as a fish in water.
(With a chorus of Madison Avenue bards
the same who sing so lyrically to Coca-Cola
the ones with the Pindaric ads
now in political hype
which acts upon the sympathetic.)
His rhetoric making about as much sense as static.
One of the problems was Nixon's lack of humor.
To a certain extent that could be corrected.
The other a lack of warmth. This was corrected
by getting him to use fiery words
without appearing to have been rehearsed.
"To cause the public to make an emotional leap,
or what theologians call a leap of faith.”
The sound of applause is brought down
camera two homes in
Nixon emerges wearing make-up
raises his arms and smiles.
Let's recall Henry Adams' statement that since George Washington
the evolution of the presidents of the United States
contradicts Darwin's theory.
We stroll along the streets of a New York neighborhood,
small shops, restaurants, Dry-Cleaning,
three-, four-storey apartment blocks,
red brick, cement, grey brick,
we move on to an Alpine Village,
cobblestoned streets of a tiny Mexican pueblo,
next to a river with a medieval mill,
the dusty streets of a Wild West town,
with its saloons, a window with shattered glass,
on a hill an Xlth century castle,
then back to apartment blocks, a bank, a liquor store
out of any city in the United States,
but if you tap anything, it has a hollow ring,
it's all plaster,
they're only exterior walls, there's nothing behind them.
A policeman up the street, with his badge
and notebook for taking down violations,
could be for real or a famous actor.
And the producer (Ed Lewis) who's showing me round, tells me:
“neither the director, nor the producer, nor anyone else
calls the shots on a film
but the bank that finances it”.
And as I came away and saw the banks, restaurants, Dry-Cleaning,
it seemed to me that whatever I tapped would sound hollow,
Hollywood, the whole of Los Angeles, everything
was just walls
with nothing behind them.
The new notion of Gaia-a living Earth.
The planet Earth, all of it a single living being.
It was so, long before there was 'life' on its surface.
There is nowhere to live except in the sky,
therefore,
having emerged from the sun's equatorial region
it became round in order to spin.
Living being that needed neither legs nor arms nor mouth nor anus
but merely to be round and spin and spin around the sun.
It revolved quickly (5-hour days and 5-hour nights),
the moon already creating tides even then.
By itself it created conditions for supporting organisms
and later organisms with consciousness, people; and later
an organism which is both community and individuals.
Burning and arid, smouldering, gushing forth lava, molten glass,
it seemed that the Earth had no future.
Who'd have said that from that flaming magma
and cities and song and nostalgias would emerge.
This oxygen which makes it possible for us to light fires,
for birds to fly and for you to think.
With 21% oxygen we can light fires,
but with 4% more, the entire Amazon would set ablaze.
Neither very hot nor very cold, nor very acid nor very alkaline.
Sufficiently large for a thin, translucent atmosphere,
but not so large as to make it dense and opaque.
A little further from the sun it would be too cold,
a little closer too hot.
Control that only a living planet can exercise.
Its biological rhythm now altered by our technical rhythm.
A life created by chance, they say, is more difficult
than for a hurricane to assemble a Boeing 707.
And that life is fragile and delicate, is merely,
says Lovelock, the Victorian concept of woman.
Galactic dust we are and galactic dust we shall again be.
But isn't there something which will endure
between galactic dust and galactic dust?
Cloud of dust,
from the condensation of a spinning dust-cloud
the sun was born.
The universe as product of law, not chance.
But which law if not the law of love?
How can blind chance create an eye?
If the sum of pro ton and electron masses were to add up
to something more than the mass of the neutron
the hydrogen atom- would fall apart, the sun would go out,
there'd be no world.
The coincidence of the balance between carbon and oxygen...
The coincidences are infinite
and cry out to be explained.
Or it’s a planned work, as Fred Hoyle said.
An apple's a few elements:
hydrogen, oxygen, carbon...
like a woman too they're the same elements
with the same compounds:
water, sugar...
Apple and woman.
From life to life.
Life transmitting life to itself.
What lizards do is turn out more lizards.
Isn't procreation the reason for our existence?
Given we're 0 children. Children of one and the same father.
The deaths a condition of evolution.
We die so that more may be born. For the others.
Stars die
to bring about the birth of other stars.
Stars are born of stars
and we owe our bodily existence
to events which took place billions of years ago
in stars that lived and died
long before the solar system began.
And we will return to being stellar gas again.
Hydrogen I will be but hydrogen in love.
paperback /ISBN 978-1-880684-93-1 / $21.95 / Ordering Information
