23 Comments
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Delaina J. Miller's avatar

This poem is breathtaking. Thank you for writing, for sharing, for being a lightening bolt. 💜

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Rajani Radhakrishnan's avatar

Thanks so much, Delaina and appreciate the restack too! 🙏

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Mahdi Meshkatee's avatar

“There is enough

universe out there for even the

moon to be just a quark. For even

hopeless desperation to pass.”

Heartfelt, Rajani.

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Rajani Radhakrishnan's avatar

Funny how a book I'm reading on physics brought about that poem...like a kaleidoscope, every time you turn, everything shifts!! Thank you, Mahdi.

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Sherry Marr's avatar

As words fail me, yours are clearer than ever and express what I cant find words for. I especially resonate with the stanza that begins "There is not enough love to smother every wound." So much suffering everywhere. This poem is my new favourite.

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Rajani Radhakrishnan's avatar

Thank you, Sherry. Words are indeed becoming hard to find. I read your poem on the Wolf today...can't imagine what the animals make of all that is happening...

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Brendan's avatar

We're certainly in a different age of poetry, so far down the road from romanticism and modernism that they seem like poor abodes for weltering heat and collapsing edifices. I hope we can call it post-digital but too many ghosts are still in that machine. Your last line keeps the question vital and insisting.

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Rajani Radhakrishnan's avatar

Thank you, Brendan...I wonder too what the poetry relevant to our times is...what it must contain, sound like...when everything is proximate and immediate and graphic, what purpose poetry serves? Yet, if not balm or clarion call...it must be at least witness...perhaps....

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Brendan's avatar

Witness absolutely, though its hard to say right now to which magnitude ... that's why there isn't a name yet for this poetry.

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Rajani Radhakrishnan's avatar

True... I think in the Earthweal days, the poems we wrote were like oracles...then came Desperate poets where I think all kinds of dystopia came up!! Now the world seems completely different again!

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Brendan's avatar

Thanks for pairing those two efforts, which did seem in tandem: oracles to blues. Now it's shatter's magnitude, orchestral legatoes leaping from one vanished floe to the next. Loving and grieving all the way.

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Petru Viljoen's avatar

"There's not enough love to smother all wounds ..." stopped me in my tracks. What do we know of love?

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Rajani Radhakrishnan's avatar

Good question, Petru! Hopefully, whatever it is, it heals and renews and makes everything beautiful again! Thanks so much- lovely to see you on Substack!!!

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Martha Ann Kennedy's avatar

I love that cursor. As for your question? I have no idea.

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Rajani Radhakrishnan's avatar

That cursor keeps blinking - like a ticking clock!! :) Thank you, Martha.

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Kerfe's avatar

I always liked that idea that you can never really locate a particle. I know nothing about physics, but it makes perfect sense to me. Now is always gone before you can even say its name.

And the tension between what is in the micro and what is in the macro--I'm not sure that can ever be resolved. We are connected to all of it and yet sometimes we are so so alone.

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Rajani Radhakrishnan's avatar

Thank you, K...the science is so fascinating. To think of what we are made of and how that is even possible - is completely surreal! But it tells us how valuable time is and how ephemeral everything is, how miniscule we are in the scheme of things!!!

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Eileen Susan_Dust the Diamonds's avatar

So much about so little...quite, quietly captivating.

💫

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Rajani Radhakrishnan's avatar

Thanks so much, Eileen. Glad you liked the poem!

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Andy's avatar

Love this, Rajani!

“There is not enough love to smother

every wound. A single day demands

five stages of grief and four stages of

anger.” There is so much here to sit with.

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Rajani Radhakrishnan's avatar

Thanks so much, Andy. Glad you liked those lines. 🙏🙏

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Lisa Jensen's avatar

What a beautiful poem - and so perfect for this moment!

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Rajani Radhakrishnan's avatar

Thank you so much, Lisa. Appreciate your feeling that it resonates with the times.

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