PANORAMIC

Originally written for the inauguration of Claudine Gay as president of Harvard University

I.

If we’re lucky, it’ll go on, this

Poem we’re writing together,

Like a winding mountain pass,

A place to journey through on the way

to where we hope to get to.

That we’re writing it together

Doesn’t make it the same

For me as for you. My lines

Zag and ripple back: rain

On water in wind. Yours

Are cloudless, telegraphic:

Songbirds busy with morning’s

Matter. Can we trust us

To follow that future music

Past the edge of familiar

Woods? This tune for what

We’ve never yet thought

To sing or say to anyone?

Can we ferry hope?

Can we outpace fright?

That we write it together

Doesn’t guarantee what it will

Mean to you, to me. Begun,

It hurries ahead. We scurry

To help it along to where

We say we hope to get to.

II.

Do you—

Can you see it?

At the horizon seam

Of undifferentiated sea?

What we are just now

Fathoming into being?

Shadows surge beneath

A roof of waves.

Sunlight tilts and pools

Above. The nothing

That isn’t possible

Flares in the mind

Of a school

of squid, becoming

The everything

That is.

III.

If we’re lucky, it’ll go on, this poem

We’re writing together—a place

To journey through on the way

to where we hope to get to—

Strike lucky, insert: brave.

Strike hope, insert: need.

Strike together, insert:

There is no difference between

What waits for you and

What’s coming for me. Strike

Place, insert: where I am

no longer afraid. Strike hope,

Insert: remember. Insert:

What has been frightened

Into hiding, scrolled up,

Buried deep. Strike

Where we say we hope to get to.

Insert whatever in your mouth

Means: Everyone, Every One,

Every ever-once-was-one,

Insert: Where everyone is free.