The Glass Constellation. Arthur Sze

      The Axis

      I hear on the radio that Anastasio Somoza

      has fled Managua, is already in Florida,

      and about to disappear on a world cruise.

      Investigators in this country are meanwhile

      analyzing the volcanic eruptions on Io,

      or are studying the erratic respiratory

      pattern of a sea horse to find the origin

      of life. The fact is, we know so little,

      but are so quick to interpret, to fit facts

      to our schemata. For instance, the final

      collapse of the Nicaraguan dictatorship

      makes me wonder if the process of change

      is a dialectic. Or is our belief in a

      pattern what sustains it? Is the recent

      history a clear pattern: a dictatorship

      followed by a popular revolt, followed by

      a renewed dictatorship exercising greater

      repression, ended by a violent revolution?

      I want to speak of opposites that depend

      on and define each other: as in a

      conversation, you feel silence in speech,

      or speech in silence. Or, as in a

      counterpoint when two melodies overlap and

      resonate, you feel the sea in the desert,

      or feel that the body and mind are

      inseparable. Then you wonder if day and

      night are indeed opposites. You knock the

      gyroscope off the axis of its spinning,

      so that one orientation in the world vanishes,

      and the others appear infinite.