Black Hole

Shiva flings creation and destruction

into the black void of Being.

Constellations of ghost words

swirl around his powerful hands.

What is and is not still is in the web

of language. We speak through a mist, a damp,

faceless wall that sections off pastures

of knowledge into marshes and moors.

No one can swim his way out. No one

can muck through the slimy bracken

to forge a trail to the birth of the cosmos.

The Yes and No of existence echo together.

We hear them behind us. We reign in front

of the wisdom of the sage, of the prophet,

of the poet whose sublime expression pierces

the armor of the banal, lathered in excess.

The fruit of our intellect is to know that something

must happen. We cling to it, a sliver of meaning,

the nebula of this is that, the eternal metaphor,

the soundless word, the invincible black hole.

And so the world begins and ends in holy disarray.