The Paris Review

Noosphere

At your center:
spectacles to sharpen sight,
wake of two white birds’ liftoff,
two wide thoughts, compassed round:
Teilhard de Chardin’s priest-scientist mess—
“if only Rome would start to doubt
herself at last, a little . . . ”
Herself beloved and busy arranging
Sacred & Precious,
Blood & Heart
in combos for good
institutions and export.
Those o’s, if excised, leave
a sound like innisphere,
like Innisfree, Lake Isle of,
where he’d be free
to love God & Rome
microbe & bone shard . . .
Splice the o’s back
and there’s Noah’s fear—
a fear Rome wakes to
each October, perfect light,
the air so sweet and God, now what
if it’s all so fresh,
and not spheres away.
But right here.