The tin balls that the Planetarium
Designed to demonstrate the powers of ten
Range from the pebbly fraction of an atom
To a hot air balloon that means the sun,
Indicting cosmologically provincial
Habits they can’t help but reinforce
By tailoring their exponential spiral
To the perspective of an audience
Whose unraised power is thereby made to seem
The integer of all created things.
Where is the diorama that could shame
And reconcile a creature that belongs
In the dark bowel of the universe
Only as our insides accommodate
Weird flora whose unconscious processes
We never see and couldn’t live without?

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Adam Kirsch’s most recent book is Who Wants to Be a Jewish Writer?: Essays (Yale).



This article originally appeared in The New Criterion, Volume 25 Number 8, on page 36
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