These days are challenging ones -- HOW can we live safely? How can we live morally? How can we learn that none of us is the center of the universe?
Today, read the poetic words of Paul Tran and consider these questions.
Copernicus by Paul Tran (from The New Yorker, link below)
Who doesn’t know how
doubt lifts the hem of its nightgown
to reveal another inch of thigh
before the face of faith?
I once didn’t. I once thought I was
my own geometry,
my own geocentric planet
spinning like a ballerina, alone
at the center of the universe, at the command of a god
opening my music box
with his dirty mouth. He said
Let there be light—
And I thought I was the light.
I was a man’s failed imagination.
Now I know what appears
as the motion of Heaven
is just the motion of Earth.
Not stars.
Not whatever I want.
Tran's poem is available here in January 20, 2020 issue of The New Yorker.
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