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.