CANTO 10 Somewhere in the middle
Somewhere in the middle of the Pacific,
as two Pan Am pilots exchange a stare,
the Diamond T gains altitude,
its wheels and engine turning slowly.
I’m breathing deep in filmy silence,
the octopus comfortable beside me.
Turtle on the hood blinks and turns its head
as the blue ocean drops away.
Now wreathed in banks of cumulus,
under this slow and steady breathing,
the Diamond T begins to shimmer.
Already into the ionosphere I see
the whole sky turning from blue
to astronauts’ purple-black.
We soar and lift ever higher.
I sense the thrum of alpha-wave propulsion
and see the magnetosphere!
a great bowl of vibrating light!
that bulges toward the sun,
shimmering and buffeting
in the turbulent solar winds
sheathing earth’s entire magnetic field
and streaming far out on the nightside—
the dark side—all alive with auroral storms
spiralling in at the poles!
The whole wide sky is aflame with charged
protons and electrons blown off the sun and
curving in hazes of purples and reds!
Drive straight on into the sun! into white-hot helium void!
Scramble the eggs of my paltry mind’s eyes
with the incineration of the kingdoms of distinctions!
Release us! Gate! Gate! Open the sun-hinged gate!
Turtle turns and speaks!
All right, I’m breaking
a silence of thirty million years!
Enough of these fantastic conceits.
You’re sold out to sensation,
financed by and mortgaged to riders and attachments.
You need a Virgil to your wannabe Danté, dude!
Let’s go sliding down the dayside stream as it spirals in
to fluoresce in arcs and rays and curling ionic waves
that entertain research rockets and falsify early-warning radar.
I’’m taking you right through the pole to the earth’s core
and then some for a few object-lessons.
No way to think about this rebuke—now we’re
curving down toward the north pole’s auroral oval!
The hood and the headlights
are glowing incandescent!
Turtle’s eyes are bright white points!
The filmy veil
we trail is a shining rippling rainbow!