What if I said the earth had been
flattened back in to history? Galileo is
forgotten and no one accedes to the horizon.

The line is not circular. The face is not
as you remember. What if I said the insect
had fallen from its sting, taken from the buzz

of irritation and grounded by merely
waving a hand. This is not what I intended.
I meant it to have some Buddhist reprieve as

the ant that is side-stepped or the bee
congratulated. What if I said “The moon is
flattened overhead” if you reached for its rough

surface you might graze the sky of its
singularity? The ancient stones pile around
me in witness. The temples return, column and

atrium to receive the lasting sacrifice.
What if I said it will all devolve to a final
Pandemonium? Then and now concurrent and

the inclusion of every name ever spoken
revived in a single word. The word was the
beginning, before the horizon was drawn on,

before rain made its mark on the sand.
With the word came the dividing, where
the infinite broke from the finite, where the first

ache of language arced from the first
tongue. The empirical silence was broken.
The moon rang like a bell in response to the

sound and the flat earth stretched to
be discovered by those who had learned
to shape and offer meaning, to offer it a name.