When Earth falls into Heaven, then there’ll be peace. When the floors let go of memories, and Heaven reaches out to take them up, reaches around us and our own hands and our eyes. When we reach out to grasp the air and the clouds dissipate—when the jet streams are struck by our hands and pulled to our faces. Then there’ll be music as the wind struggles, the music of a desperate world against the heads of small people. When motions and forces objectify our bodies, aimlessly, guiltlessly, events without memory. When there is no weather report, and the birds have gone into separatism, then there’ll be stillness, an extension of stillness that is its own form of land—a renewed chance for peace. When Earth becomes a star and enters the world of Heaven, then there’ll be an emptiness that doesn’t rob time in order to keep itself calm. Then there’ll be another form in which to ferry peace.
Earth Falls into Heaven
Feature Date
Series
Selected By
Share This Poem
Print This Poem
“Earth Falls into Heaven” from THE SELKIE: by Morgan Võ.
Published by The Song Cave on May 8, 2024.
Copyright © 2024 by Morgan Võ.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.
Morgan Võ (b. 1989) is a poet and librarian concerned with resonance, contingency, difficulty understanding, and the presence of the dead among the living. He is the author of The Selkie (The Song Cave, 2024).
"Morgan Võ’s debut poetry collection, The Selkie, is a wonderful, sometimes very funny book about the proximity of ordinary life to the production of mass death. It stars 'the monger.' He sells fish. Are his wares alive? Not exactly, he explains, they just 'keep / eating and shitting.' The monger mistakes a fish for a dollar bill and so it goes into circulation, gets worn thin, torn in two, then taped back together. Together, the fish and the monger do durational performance art, à la Tehching Hsieh and Linda Montano in Rope Piece. The monger shows the fish a DaBaby meme. In 2024, I read Võ’s poems again and again. I’m obsessed with the way they seem to search, as we all do, for words for extreme violence. In one, the monger goes to see Anthony Bourdain speak at a local library. 'what do i have left / to say?' Bourdain-in-the-poem asks. 'what do i do now?' In another, a fish corpse is found to contain a delicate scroll that reads 'after // all // you // know // and // tibet // is // still // not // free?'”
—Silas Jones, author of “Regular Decision”
Poetry Daily Depends on You
With your support, we make reading the best contemporary poetry a treasured daily experience. Consider a contribution today.
