Night Flight: New York /

Muriel Rukeyser
Theory of Flight, 1935
from Night Flight: New York

Believe that we bloom upon this stalk of time ;
and in this expansion, time too grows for us
richer and richer towards infinity.

They promised us the gold and harps and seraphs.
Our rising and going to sleep is better than future pinions.
We surrender that hope, drawing our own days in,
covering space and time draped in tornadoes,
lightning invention, speed crushing the stars upon us,
stretching the accordion of our lives, sounding the same chord
longer and savoring it until the echo fails.

Believe that your presences are strong,
O be convinced without formula or rhyme
or any dogma ; use yourselves : be : fly.
Believe that we bloom upon this stalk of time.


---
one of my favorite poems Ever

-IA