3 Extracts
1
The music of the spheres. A universe harmonious as a harp. Rhythm is repeated equal times. Heartbeat. Day/night. Migrant birds' arrivals and departures. Star cycles and maize cycles. Mimosa opening during the day and folding when night comes. Moon and tide rhythms. And crabs who know the tide is on the ebb and before it goes out have their hiding holes. A single rhythm in planets, the sea, atoms, apples which ripen and fall, and Newton's head. Melody, arpeggio, chord. The harp of the universe. Unity behind apparent multiplicity that is music. Difference between music and noise... The bell's sound is in its shape. Or girls' legs, come to that. Matter is music. Matter in perpetual motion in space and time. Hearts and stars are rhythmical. The universe sings and Pythagoras heard it. The music of the spheres, rather than classical music, jazz.
2
From water, invisible hydrogen and oxygen, invisible life arose which created the blue atmosphere and the earth's green. The green of the fields comes from life, green from the sun. The fields are green because they do not absorb green. As a camera flash is sun. A sun flash. How lovely the earth is seen from the air especially where it meets water! Animals and plants, we all have the same microscopic ancestor. We are notes in the same music. A universe harmonious as a harp – wings, neck, tail all keeping time – heart and aorta have rhythm like a musical instrument.
3
Matter:
spirit's shape.
A non-casual ordering of atoms and photons.
Or as if matter were made of spirit.
'Physicists speak of subatomic particles
as if they had objective reality.'
Matter ever in movement.
Never at rest.
If atoms were immutable,
there would only be a dead universe.
Nothing is or is not,
everything in the process of being.
And what is real?
Is jealousy real?
Love is real.
The bodies of gaseous spheres that we call stars
kept together and lit by their own gravity.
Their light is nakedness says Rubén,
who brought harmony from the sacred wood.
Suppose, reader, we want to see star HD193182.
The star could not see its beauty
unless we did.
We are the star seeing itself
born in its fire
and cooled to be able to think and see.
Protons, neutrons and electrons
are the human body, the planet and the stars.
From the unconscious consciousness came
so in us the planet loves and dreams.
It is the Earth singing this Cosmic Canticle in me.
The music of the spheres.
Translated by Dinah Livingstone
Catholic priest Ernesto Cardenal was Minister of Culture in the Sandinista government from 1979–1987. ‘The Music of the Spheres’ is one cantiga in his 580-page poem Cosmic Canticle (Cántico Cósmico), published by Editorial Nueva Nicaragua, Managua, 1989. At the London launch of the translation the TMMC band (Telepathic Music Campaign, Tom Livingstone et al) played their 20 minute piece The Music of the Spheres, inspired by the poem. It is online at: https://on.soundcloud.com/Di9Rd