Atomic Psalm by MAURYA SIMON

Last night the stars seemed not themselves,

for they sang such a lonely song

I heard all creation weep along.

And the moon seemed too molten hot--

it burned a hole right through the roof,

right through the sky, it burned

an empty place into the night.

And oh how the world rocked

like a cradle in the ether of the dark.

And how the children, lost in dreams,

awoke with a start, not out of fear

but from surprise. They blinked their eyes

in that starless night, that moonless night,

and cried, though no one heard.

God-Who-Is-Not, give us a lock

of your immortal hair, or give us stars

that we can reach and hang upon the bars

of our despair; give us back the rock

called moon, that still, white face

we write our lives upon. Give us back

our dark hope in its golden case.

From “The Forgotten Language: Contemporary Poets and Nature,” edited by Christopher Merrill (Peregrine Smith Books, Salt Lake City: $14.95, paper; 176 pp.). Classic nature poetry was lyric poetry, a poetry of wonder. Contemporary nature poetry is often an elegaic poetry: Margaret Atwood, “Elegy for the Giant Tortoises”; James Dickey,”For the Last Wolverine”; W. S Merwin, “For a Coming Extinction”--all in this collection. Maurya Simon, who lives on Mount Baldy and teaches at UC Riverside, captures the mood of loss tinged with panic as it affects even children: In lost wildness is the perdition of the world. 1990 by Maurya Simon. Reprinted by permission of the poet.