From the archives – The Big Bang — Elizabeth H. Barbato

Night sky picture of constellation Orion.

The Big Bang
for Jess, Emma, & Lila—when they were twelve

Before there was Light,
God snapped fingers
and almost without music
muscled the world into being.
Some people call this
the Big Bang.
It’s not much of a name,
when you think about it.
Perhaps the scientists tried
with their scientist brains
to come up with something,
well, perhaps more mellifluous.
Or at least with a more sophisticated
vocabulary. Maybe, after sweating
for hours in the lab, they called up
their poet friends, drunk on knowledge.
Give us a name for the beginning,
they slurred. But the poets,
knowing there can be only One
Logos, carefully hung up.
They changed the messages
on their answering machines—
“Gone Fishing,” or “See you real soon!”
chirped their voices on the scratchy tapes.
And they fled the country that night
as Fritz Lang, the director, had years ago
when Hitler, after having seen
his masterpiece Metropolis,
sent men to his door to haul him
into service for the Fuhrer.
I could call that a Little Bang,
that type of resistance, the artist
leaving his home and all his possessions
behind to chase safety into the outer dark.
But here, in the secret Atlantis
of the poets, Fritz is safe, as is anyone
who wonders what God called the event.

by Elizabeth H. Barbato

from Autumn Sky Poetry Number 10, June 2008

Photo by Christine Klocek-Lim

Comments

One response to “From the archives – The Big Bang — Elizabeth H. Barbato”

  1. Dee Artea Avatar
    Dee Artea

    In fact, the term was coined by a scientist who believed (like Aristotle) that the universe was eternal and always existed and hence there was no creation. Further, the specific term Big Bang was an adolescent joke with its sexual connotation.

    I should point out that I don’t say all this as a snooty scientist chastising a poet, for I am a published poet too.

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