The Revolution of the Spheres

by Justin Wong (February 2020)

Group IX/UW, The Dove, No. 13, Hilma af Klint, 1915

 

 

The centre is not here,

Nor branched above are the heavens,

The middle is in the edge,

And God is to be known in the haunted wind.

 

The sacrament is where the temple sits,

And the divine in the illuminated page,

Nothing is in existence within the vast stars vault,

And the kingdom of God is scattered like ash about the globe.

 

                     The universe is an idea,

Whose existence breathes in the mind,

Rather than in oceanic depths we will not sail,

As the ascent into heaven we will not know.

 

The cosmos is what it always was

When devised in the minds of dreamers,

Who saw the world as the poet does his love,

The Centrepoint of the heavens,

where bodies around it circumnavigate,

In sightings of movements mysterious,

Where the pilgrimage of stars destinies away

burn strange paths through the vacant black.

 

Ptolemy measured the heavens,

And with it married matter and spirit,

The centre was an echo of the heart,

The earth a reflection of the soul,

The crowning achievement of the cosmos,

Man—the jewel of creation amongst all the others,

Sculpted in the God reflecting waters,

To be beneath His angels.

 

Though history is perpetual revolt, 

The biography of people in flux,

Shifting as the moon does the peaceful sea,

Like when Copernicus annulled matter from spirit,

The sun transformed into the universes primary concern,

In which bodies around it dance,

As the maypole of pagans of old,

With it sowing the discordant seeds of nothingness.

 

Aren’t the stars above a strange mirror to the soul?

Is the void not a darkened glass to the self?

 

The things out there are buried deep inside,

The centre exists in the mind,

Though the centre is not here.

The more we look out at the lustreless sky through lens,

The deeper we peer into the psyche.

 

Melancholy becomes the residue of all knowledge,

Increasing with the founts of wisdom.

 

Copernicus introduced us all to insanity,

Shifting like plates the foundations of truth,

Divorcing meaning from matter,

As if it were the lady of Aragon from her beloved.

The naturalistic idol he envisioned was sculpted,

Admonishing the preconceived notions of our forebears,

Of the creator devising the cosmos for us to gaze up in wonder,

Contemplating with awe the majesty of his devotion.

 

Though the centre is not here,

Nor branched above are the heavens,

The middle is in the edge,

And God is to be known in the haunted wind.

 

 

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Justin Wong is originally from Wembley, though at the moment is based in the West Midlands. He has been passionate about the English language and Literature since a young age. Previously, he lived in China working as an English teacher. His novel Millie’s Dream is available here.

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