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I am re-reading Cosmic Canticle by Ernesto Cardenal. The review in that link there describes the poem far better than I can right now.

I first read the poem in 1996 when I found a copy of the book in a remainder bin as one of Vancouver’s small bookstores was being squeezed out of existence by a chain. I was immediately struck by the beginning of the first Cantiga:

In the beginning there was nothing
      neither space 
             nor time.
                       The entire universe concentrated
in the space of the nucleus of an atom,
and before that even less, much less than a proton, 
and even less still, an infinitely dense mathematical point.
                                       And that was Big Bang. 

From there the poem meanders through origin stories and, as I reread it now – all 481 pages of it – I see where Cardenal has assembled a collection of sources and ideas and markers on the path of the evolution of human consciousness as it is mirrored in the evolution of the universe. Many of these things he points to – snippets of quantum theory or sacred songs describing origins and history – ring with the clarity and beauty of poetic cadance, and, at least to this blogger’s mind, they also read as invitations. As if Cardenal was saying “so you think that is cool? Check out what Cardinal Danielou had to say.” Reading this poem with the book in one hand and Google in the other invites a journey inward into a huge resevoir of conjecture, observation and thought.

For example, here is Cardenal’s take on one creation story, cribbed from a Maori tale of origins:

anxiously searching in the deep darkness,
searching
there on the shore that divides day from night,
the night conceived the seed of night,
the heart of night had always been there
even in the deep darkness,
the palpitating pulpa of life
grows in the deep darkness,
out of the shadows even the most tenuous ray of light emerges,
the procreative power,
life's first known ecstasy, 
with the joy of passing from silence to sound, 
and thus the progeny of the Great Expander
filled the expansion of the skies,
the chorus of life arose and erupted in ecstasy
and then reposed in a delight of calm.

This story is borrowed from the Maori whakapapa of creation, the story that is told to begin all stories, the lineage that describes all lineages, the genealogy of matter. A whakapapa is a history in song form that links the singer to his or her ancestors and beyond that to the beginning moment of time when the universe manifested its potential:

“The term “Te Here Tangata”, literally The Rope of Mankind, is also used to describe genealogy. I visualise myself with my hand on this rope which stretches into the past for the fifty or so generations that I can see, back from there to the instant of Creation, and on into the future for at least as long. In this modern world of short term political, social, economic and business perspectives, and instant consumer gratification, Te Here Tangata is a humbling concept.”

On this Maori website you can read more about whakapapa and see an example of one. This author has also recorded the whakapapa of creation, a version of the story that Cardenal paraphrases above:

Ko Te Kore (the void, energy, nothingness, potential)
Te Kore-te-whiwhia (the void in which nothing is possessed)
Te Kore-te-rawea (the void in which nothing is felt)
Te Kore-i-ai (the void with nothing in union)
Te Kore-te-wiwia (the space without boundaries)

Na Te Kore Te Po (from the void the night)
Te Po-nui (the great night)
Te Po-roa (the long night)
Te Po-uriuri (the deep night)
Te Po-kerekere (the intense night)
Te Po-tiwhatiwha (the dark night)
Te Po-te-kitea (the night in which nothing is seen)
Te Po-tangotango (the intensely dark night)
Te Po-whawha (the night of feeling)
Te Po-namunamu-ki-taiao (the night of seeking the passage to the world)
Te Po-tahuri-atu (the night of restless turning)
Te Po-tahuri-mai-ki-taiao (the night of turning towards the revealed world)

Ki te Whai-ao (to the glimmer of dawn)
Ki te Ao-marama (to the bright light of day)
Tihei mauri-ora (there is life)

A lineage that links us to the very beginnings of the universe is welcome, epecially for the humility it engenders.