Telescope: a poem by Lousie Glück

Telescope 
Louise Glück

There is a moment after you move your eye away

when you forget where you are

because you’ve been living, it seems,

somewhere else, in the silence of the night sky.

You’ve stopped being here in the world.

You’re in a different place,

a place where human life has no meaning.

You’re not a creature in body.

You exist as the stars exist,

participating in their stillness, their immensity.

Then you’re in the world again.

At night, on the cold hill,

taking the telescope apart.

You realize afterward

not that the image is false

but the relation is false.

You see again how far away

every thing is from every other thing.

You got your passion, you got your pride
But don't you know that only fools are satisfied?
Dream on, but don't imagine they'll all come true (Oooh)
When will you realize, Vienna waits for you?

-- They live in cities where nothing grows. Did you know that? Nothing grows in the city. Even their minds they keep steamheated. Their horizons are dirty windowsills.
-- Drunk, perhaps. You never know.
-- Whose chamberlain is a bishop and king, and his chief cook a king and an abbot, he couldn't stoop to taking such titles as those.
-- Do you know what happens to people in cities? I'll tell you what happens to people in cities. They lose the seasons, that's what happens. They lose the extremes, the winter and summer. They lose the means, the spring and the fall. They lose the beginning and end of the day, and nothing grows but their bank accounts. Life in the city is just all middle, nothing is born and nothing dies. Things appear, and things are killed, but nothing begins and nothing ends.