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    The Angel of Absolute Zero
    The Angel of Absolute Zero
    The Angel of Absolute Zero
    Ebook95 pages41 minutes

    The Angel of Absolute Zero

    By Marjorie Stelmach

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    About this ebook

    Marjorie Stelmach's new collection, The Angel of Absolute Zero, seeks to engage its readers in thoughtful reflection on our difficult times. The opening section of the book, entitled Canticle of Want, introduces the collection's governing characteristic: these poems want a lot. They ask us to view our damaged planet and acknowledge our complicity; to question "how it is we have come to this" and take heart in our wish to be more worthy; to accept suffering and loss and yet feel gratitude, expect joy. In short, these poems aspire to "teach us to number our days that we may gain a heart of wisdom."
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCascade Books
    Release dateApr 29, 2022
    ISBN9781666798449
    The Angel of Absolute Zero
    Author

    Marjorie Stelmach

    Marjorie Stelmach is the author of four previous volumes of poems, Night Drawings (awarded the Marianne Moore Prize), A History of Disappearance, Bent upon Light, and Without Angels. A selection of her poems received the first Missouri Biennial Award. Her work has recently appeared in Boulevard, Cincinnati Review, Florida Review, Gettysburg Review, Image, New Letters, Poet Lore, ONE, Relief, and Tampa Review. Falter Reviewed by Grace Cavalieri for the 'Washington Independent Review of Books'

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      Book preview

      The Angel of Absolute Zero - Marjorie Stelmach

      Tenebrae

      Churches are best for prayer that have the least light.

      —John Donne

      It looks the same.

      Shadowy crosses tremble in the long aisle.

      Saints recede into darkened archways.

      The organ softly takes up being lost—a minor key,

      somber, remote.

      In candlelit pews, soft garments shift their folds,

      aligning with the murmur of prayer.

      Down all these years it returns, the order of service.

      I follow to the end

      and leave in silence.

      I wasn’t looking for a way back,

      only to close the day against an old error.

      A day as long as ever.

      An error even longer.

      Canticle of Want

      Canticle of Want

      Let me not be blamed for the script, for the ink is bad

      and the vellum defective, and the day is dark.

      —anonymous scribe

      Lord of stone cliffs and the guileless trill

      of the canyon wren, of stunted hemlocks,

      imperiled coasts; Lord of the fragile nitrogen cycle,

      vanishing aquifers, spreading deserts;

      Lord of neglect and carelessness, of greed

      and depletion, the doleful call of the loon;

      Lord of ruin, of remnant and ragtag, of making do,

      you too must want as fiercely as we do,

      your world being almost nothing but want.

      Each year in the heartland, twilight breezes

      slide easily over our furrowed acres

      sowing all manner of wanton seeds;

      a red-shouldered hawk wheels and watches;

      its shadow wheels and is watched. Each harvest,

      a full moon, drastically magnified, rises—

      a trick of the eye no one can account for: so much

      is beyond our knowledge. For more than

      two hundred thousand years, our kind has studied

      this earth; we have yet to discern your purpose.

      How badly we want to believe in your good intentions.

      For centuries, monks dipped quills into inks

      concocted from hawthorn, salts, and wine.

      They lived in vigilance, hidden away, recording

      your hints and evasions; they died

      of their times, as we do. We’re told they stayed faithful.

      It’s harder now. Today, no one doubts

      who owns the heavens: American drones cross

      invisibly over invisible borders; refugees

      trudge toward rumors of air drops. Brevity haunts us.

      Every moonrise augurs departure. By night,

      we children of plenty labor over our keyboards,

      documenting our days in a digital light

      we have found no way to erase. How badly we want

      to escape all notice, want equally not to be

      lost sight of. Lord, whose name is Everlasting,

      how could we think you would understand?

      The Lost Blue of Chartres

      By the 12th century, the deep cobalt blue

      in the stained glass of Chartres was a secret lost.

      The blue was born

      in an age of faith,

      an age of filth.

      Some say it derived

      from peasant sweat,

      from smears

      of soot, from piles

      of excrement underfoot,

      or the muck tramped back

      to the worksite from huts

      shared with beasts.

      Some scholars believe

      its source was potash

      leached in iron pots

      to a white salt. Others,

      inclined to the abstract,

      claim

      it clung like mold

      to the architects’ scrolls—

      a fur of hubris,

      delusion, corruption.

      Mystics will tell you

      the blue was never born:

      it was simply there—

      in the water, in the air,

      in the soil.

      Art historians insist

      that a blue fog hung

      in that century’s lanes—

      a breath exhaled

      from birch tree forests.

      Folktales swear

      the blue was pressed

      into the villagers’

      very skin,

      that it darkened

      their life-lines,

      the creases of their faces,

      the backs of their knees.

      Or maybe it arose

      in diaphanous coils

      from votive

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