{"id":117,"date":"2003-02-01T21:34:20","date_gmt":"2003-02-02T05:34:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chriscorrigan.com\/blogs\/?p=117"},"modified":"2003-02-01T21:34:20","modified_gmt":"2003-02-02T05:34:20","slug":"88409434","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/88409434\/","title":{"rendered":"88409434"},"content":{"rendered":"

There is something about those that die in the service of seeking, in the process of wayfinding. I have always been a kid entranced by space, born as I was a month before Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. I am a child of the space age, and my eyes are often on the sky looking marvelling at the jewelbox of possibility and scale that enfolds us. And so the deaths of astronauts are always a little bit like the death of a small part of me, the part that always wanted to go to space. <\/p>\n

It’s not as if the seven deaths above Texas this morning were any more or less important or significant or even tragic as the 40 people that died in a train crash in Zimbabwe<\/A>, the 7 students that died in an avalanche<\/A> in the Rockies, or the 10 people that died in Indonesia in a landslide<\/A>. All of these deaths, tragic accidents, disasters for families and communities, all of them simply resonate on a day when accidental death is in the news, perhaps even as a prelude to scores of deliberate deaths to come.<\/p>\n

At any rate, today I found a poem by John Yau<\/a>, which speaks remarkably well to the events of today, whatever continent they happened on. The poems are love poems, reflecting the real tragedy in loss, the loss of connection, deep and familiar like that of a family or shallow and distant like that of a man whose transcended childhood is composed of so many dreams of flying in space.<\/p>\n

Borrowed Love Poems <\/B><\/p>\n

1. <\/p>\n

What can I do, I have dreamed of you so much
\nWhat can I do, lost as I am in the sky <\/p>\n

What can I do, now that all
\nthe doors and windows are open <\/p>\n

I will whisper this in your ear
\nas if it were a rough draft <\/p>\n

something I scribbled on a napkin
\nI have dreamed of you so much <\/p>\n

there is no time left to write
\nno time left on the sundial <\/p>\n

for my shadow to fall back to earth
\nlost as I am in the sky <\/p>\n

2. <\/p>\n

What can I do, all the years that we talked
\nand I was afraid to want more <\/p>\n

What can I do, now that these hours
\nbelong to neither you nor me <\/p>\n

Lost as I am in the sky
\nWhat can I do, now that I cannot find <\/p>\n

the words I need
\nwhen your hair is mine <\/p>\n

now that there is no time to sleep
\nnow that your name is not enough <\/p>\n

3. <\/p>\n

What can I do, if a red meteor wakes the earth
\nand the color of robbery is in the air <\/p>\n

Now that I dream of you so much
\nmy lips are like clouds <\/p>\n

drifting above the shadow of one who is asleep
\nNow that the moon is enthralled with a wall <\/p>\n

What can I do, if one of us is lying on the earth
\nand the other is lost in the sky <\/p>\n

4. <\/p>\n

What can I do, lost as I am in the wind
\nand lightning that surrounds you <\/p>\n

What can I do, now that my tears
\nare rising toward the sky <\/p>\n

only to fall back
\ninto the sea again <\/p>\n

What can I do, now that this page is wet
\nnow that this pen is empty <\/p>\n

5. <\/p>\n

What can I do, now that the sky
\nhas shut its iron door <\/p>\n

and bolted clouds
\nto the back of the moon <\/p>\n

now that the wind
\nhas diverted the ocean’s attention <\/p>\n

now that a red meteor
\nhas plunged into the lake <\/p>\n

now that I am awake
\nnow that you have closed the book <\/p>\n

6. <\/p>\n

Now that the sky is green
\nand the air is red with rain <\/p>\n

I never stood in
\nthe shadow of pyramids <\/p>\n

I never walked from village to village
\nin search of fragments <\/p>\n

that had fallen to earth in another age
\nWhat can I do, now that we have collided <\/p>\n

on a cloudless night
\nand sparks rise <\/p>\n

from the bottom of a thousand lakes <\/p>\n

7. <\/p>\n

To some, the winter sky is a blue peach
\nteeming with worms <\/p>\n

and the clouds are growing thick
\nwith sour milk <\/p>\n

What can I do, now that the fat black sea
\nis seething <\/p>\n

now that I have refused to return
\nmy borrowed dust to the butterflies <\/p>\n

their wings full of yellow flour <\/p>\n

8. <\/p>\n

What can I do, I never believed happiness
\ncould be premeditated <\/p>\n

What can I do, having argued with the obedient world
\nthat language will infiltrate its walls <\/p>\n

What can I do, now that I have sent you
\na necklace of dead dried bees <\/p>\n

and now that I want to
\nbe like the necklace <\/p>\n

and turn flowers into red candles
\npouring from the sun <\/p>\n

9. <\/p>\n

What can I do, now that I have spent my life
\nstudying the physics of good-bye <\/p>\n

every velocity and particle in all the waves
\nundulating through the relapse of a moment’s fission <\/p>\n

now that I must surrender this violin
\nto the sea’s foaming black tongue <\/p>\n

now that January is almost here
\nand I have started celebrating a completely different life <\/p>\n

10. <\/p>\n

Now that the seven wonders of the night
\nhave been stolen by history <\/p>\n

Now that the sky is lost and the stars
\nhave slipped into a book <\/p>\n

Now that the moon is boiling
\nlike the blood where it swims <\/p>\n

Now that there are no blossoms left
\nto glue to the sky <\/p>\n

What can I do, I who never invented
\nanything <\/p>\n

and who dreamed of you so much
\nI was amazed to discover <\/p>\n

the claw marks of those
\nwho preceded us across this burning floor <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There is something about those that die in the service of seeking, in the process of wayfinding. I have always been a kid entranced by space, born as I was a month before Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. I am a child of the space age, and my eyes are often on the sky looking marvelling at the jewelbox of possibility and scale that enfolds us. And so the deaths of astronauts are always a little bit like the death of a small part of me, the part that always wanted to go to space. It’s not as if …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-117","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/siBp1-88409434","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=117"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}