But what an absurd thing life is, looked at superficially, so absurd you feel yourself forced back on a stubborn, desperate, faith in the reality of the survival of the spirit. Otherwise—were there no such thing as the spirit, I mean—we should have to be idiots not to call off the whole human effort.
————-——Teilhard de Chardin

Let the inhabitants of the rock sing…
————-——Isaiah 42:1

 

(Puy-de-Dome)

 

The late foragers wouldn’t know what to make of me
erupting as I did from deepest earth, building myself
out of ash plumes and fire, a rush of living magma

leveling virgin forest for new growth when I cooled.
No wonder, after they finally left the caves, roofed
their sheds, gathered the herds, when conquerors

cleared roads—they raised a temple at my cinder crown
to the god of boundaries, god of messages and trade,
a blended god, the soul’s guide to the underworld.

Am I not the emblem of all that was or will be, all
embers born of embers from a primal blinding flash,
and harbinger for the tallow sun flickering out?

He must have known as much, must have intuited,
that boy who would climb my bluff hoping to find
“what there was inside the volcanoes,” pouring over

my share of earth, its rocky sediments, crystal veins,
as though he would harvest every stone, shell splinter,
metal bolt, the lockpin of a plough—his succession

“of idols” before his iron god. Fiery their force, celestial
their home, reads the family’s adage, with that trinity
of roses above the lintel their seal, such pretentions

of their kind. Yes, he would see through me, the boy
who would call himself a pilgrim along a road of fire—
see into my obdurate heart to the flaming heart beyond.

 

 

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Daniel Tobin is the author of nine books of poems, including From Nothing (Four Way), winner of the Julia Ward Howe Award, and most recently Blood Labors (Four Way), named one of the best poetry books of 2018 by the New York Times and the Washington Independent Review of Books.