Page 26 - The Irony Board
P. 26
Into the Mind
Red shift
Shunt galaxies
Of emotion
Too far out,
And their light
Will never reach
Your earthbound eyes.
From the microscopic to the telescopic: beyond the most distant
objects we can optically perceive, others still more distant may be of
an age or speed of recession precluding our seeing them in the near
future (or ever). Exiling emotions not only eliminates their
participation in one’s own life, but also shuts out any light they
might shed on human affairs in general. As wavelengths are
stretched by a separating velocity, so too are feelings distorted: a
shift to one end of the spectrum. Everything gets redder,
approaching the color of anger; Gluckman has propelled his pun out
of the body of the poem into its title.
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