MYSTERY OBJECT FOUND IN SUPERNOVA’S HEART (After an item in the YAHOO Science News)
At first glance, the object looked like the cold
densely packed stellar corpse one expects
to see inside a bimillenial supernova.
But the X-rays revealed an unprecedented enigma:
this object is far older than the heart it inhabits.
Tonight, under winter skies,
I tally all the things that have yet to come,
against the hard count of things gone,
doggedly tilting toward balance,
and thanking the stars their indulgence.
And it seems that I’ve always had the time
to become a substance older than myself.
At some point in the past 24 hours, Max (the 12-y.o. lad whose rearing is partly my responsibility) removed his booming headphones long enough to send his father an e-mail informing him that rap is a venerable tradition, dating back to the medieval Scots and their “flyting.” The lad even supplied some proof texts: see here, or here, or here.
Every modern dad knows the Book of Ecclesiastes by heart. No modern dad will allow any teachable moment to pass untutored by the past. ”Oh yea?” mutters Max’s modern dad, ”Medieval Scots? Hah! It’s time we spoke of the Unferþ-Beowulf maþelodaþon my son!” (Er, ok, try lines 499-606 from here or, even better, here).
Max’s dad is already thumbing through his collections of Norse mythologies when he notices that his charge has restored his aural intake apparatus to the electronic cups wrapped around his growing head.
What Max’s dad recognizes, but will never understand, is the systemic risk that his timing may be way off.
I might even show you my photograph album. You might even see a face in it which might remind you of your own, of what you once were. You might see faces of others, in shadow, or cheeks of others, turning, or jaws, or backs of necks, or eyes, dark under hats, which remind you of others, whom you once knew, whom you thought long dead, but from whom you will still receive a sidelong glance, if you can face the good ghost. Allow the love of the good ghost. They possess all that emotion… trapped. Bow to it. It will assuredly never release them, but who knows… what relief… it may give to them… who knows how they may quicken… in their chains, in their glass jars. You think it cruel… to quicken them, when they are fixed, imprisoned? No…no. Deeply, deeply, they wish to respond to your touch, to your look, and when you smile, their joy… is unbounded. And so I say to you, tender the dead, as you yourself would be tendered, now, in what you would describe as your life.
Thanks to my friend C. Wilkins who forwarded this gorgeous quote with a note from the Harold Pinter Society that Pinter requested it be read at his funeral.
Кто может знать при слове–расставанье,
Какая нам разлука предстоит?
–Осипъ Мандельштамъ / Osip Mandelstam (b. 27 December 1891)
Who can predict, when farewell is mentioned,
What kind of parting will it be?
–Translation by Ilya Levin
To hear Mandelstam’s poem Tristia in its entirety, read in Russian and then in English (Brodsky’s translation in rhyme), try the following video for which we thank pernishus:
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