THE AXIS

I hear on the radio that Anastasio Somoza

has fled Managua, is already in Florida,

and about to disappear on a world cruise.

Investigators in this country are meanwhile

analyzing the volcanic eruptions on Io,

or are studying the erratic respiratory

pattern of a sea horse to find the origin

of life. The fact is, we know so little,

but are so quick to interpret, to fit facts

to our schemata. For instance, the final

collapse of the Nicaraguan dictatorship

makes me wonder if the process of change

is a dialectic. Or is our belief in a

pattern what sustains it? Is the recent

history a clear pattern: a dictatorship

followed by a popular revolt, followed by

a renewed dictatorship exercising greater

repression, ended by a violent revolution?

I want to speak of opposites that depend

on and define each other: as in a

conversation, you feel silence in speech,

or speech in silence. Or, as in a

counterpoint when two melodies overlap and

resonate, you feel the sea in the desert,

or feel that the body and mind are

inseparable. Then you wonder if day and

night are indeed opposites. You knock the

gyroscope off the axis of its spinning,

so that one orientation in the world vanishes,

and the others appear infinite.