Peter Dale Scott


THE SIZE OF EARTH:

A SHORT SIMPLE POEM TO GET US OUT OF IRAQ

      For Laura & George W. Bush


Having just seen Orion upside down
over Sydney Harbor

my head aligned
with the point of his hanging dagger

my feet with its haft
I gather this stuff we stand on has two sides

and that from the absence 
of parallactic shift

our earth compared to the space 
in Orion’s dagger

is a speck, almost nothing at all


                      ii

And that from either edge
of this speck of planet dust

we can look beyond the apparencies
of Northern and Southern Cross

to the great stream of the Milky Way
either upside or down

and the glorious imaginative source
you shall love

over and beyond Homer 
the Vedas the Da Xue

Dante the Shahnama Marx the Ring
even our epiphanies

and our devotions
leading to massacres

and autos-da-fe


                          iii

--- literally billions
of planets in our galaxy ---                      New York Times 10/5/06

what can we know of them?


                          iv

When we just consider ourselves strong
we have the power to create
a hell we cannot think is God’s

and when we see we are a speck
we become a speck that can
wake to the glory


                          v

--- consider our withdrawal from Vietnam
--- now a tourist destination! ---
--- not the end of the world!