PDF

Human Kind Can’t Bear Very Much Reality


by Gary Hardaway


Atoms hum and buzz
outside the range we hear,
beneath the threshold
palpable by fingertips.

Particles flung by the sun
pierce us through, undetected
by the flesh and bonework
we comprise. We are

insensitive to most of the cosmos
though it's galaxies bellow
at a resonance a thousand octaves
under the basest bass strings

of concerto and quartet.
We can't embrace our own
complexities and certainly
none of those

a thousand light years away
to whom Bach and calculus
would seem but silence and
a tedious inability to pay attention.
Endcap