Page 58 - WTP Vol. X #7

Head of a Pin (continued from preceding page)
comprehend. Electron microscopes peer into in- ner space and photograph viruses that are orders of magnitude smaller than even bacteria. One of those viruses has killed nearly five million people around the world and is even now killing about 10,000 people every day — clearly real, an agent of fate, no matter how tiny. According to Dionysus the Areopagite, living in 1st century Greece, the Athenians always raised, in addition to their other altars, an altar to “an unknown god,” which seems to me an admirable gesture of humility.
A few months after my illness, my platelet count began to rise again. I was disappointed of course, but it had taken decades to climb to the alarming num- ber that signaled Thrombocythemia, more decades than I probably have left anyway. I’m not worried about it, and I am grateful for the chance to be a fool- ish, hopeful, curious old man overtaken by wonder and a thirst for miracles.
Or maybe I was only moving from station to station along the interior walls of my hopelessly Catholic post-Catholic skull. Maybe I was trying to prepare for my death. The same friend who’d begged me not to “go priest on us” told me, “Old guys always get philosophical when they get sick.” It was such
a gentle verbal poke in the ribs, that all at once I remembered why I love him.
We are surrounded by invisible companions, in a timeless conversation, as centuries of angelology insist. Virology describes this conversation: RNA changing DNA or modifying it, activating and de- activating certain genes. The immune system is an individualized genetic organization that extends backward into evolutionary time: bespoke, unique, transcending history but also made of it. It is there
to be relied on for protection without our having to ask for it, there from time immemorial, a memory of eternity, an emanation of health, a measure to deter- mine what ought to be. An angel by any other name would be as sweet. However we conceive of them, it is for both viruses and angels to do, to cause, to effect change and shape destiny. We who are their foes and fools and wombs must wonder. That’s how we are made; that’s what we’re for — to wonder. We want to know what is happening to us.
Hoffman has published four volumes of poetry, Without Paradise; Gold Star Road; Emblem; and Noon until Night. His other books include the memoirs Half the House and Love & Fury, and the story collection Interference and Other Stories. Same War, a new book of poems, will be published in 2023.
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Brains 1914
graphite, India ink, printer ink and paper, on paper
14'' x 17''
By Julie Harrison