Earthworm

My partner Kazim is a poet and so there are piles of books everywhere. I just stumbled across the following poem by Louise Gluck in her collection, A Village Life.


"Earthworm"

It is not sad not to be human
nor is living entirely within the earth
demeaning or empty: it is the nature of the mind
to defend its eminence, as it is the nature of those
who walk on the surface to fear its depths -- one's
position determines one's feelings. And yet
to walk on top of a thing is not to prevail over it --
it is more the opposite, a disguised dependency,
by which the slave completes the master. Likewise
the mind disdains what it can't control,
which will in turn destroy it. It is not painful to return
without language or vision: if, like the Buddhists,
one declines to leave
inventories of the self, one emerges in a space
the mind cannot conceive, being wholly physical, not
metaphoric. What is your word? Infinity, meaning
that which cannot be measured.







What is it to "[emerge] in a space/ the mind cannot conceive, being wholly physical, not/ metaphoric?" Worms in the compost piles. Humans in the outhouse at the farm. Shit and sawdust. Chinese cabbage big and heavy.

Last week I was part of a panel on faith and the environment for an Environmental Studies class at Oberlin College. I was most struck by a comment made by Prof. Jafar Mahallati, also on the panel. He spoke of how in Islam the concept of "jinns" reflects an understanding of the infinite richness and fullness of life, that even the air and fire are not empty but pulsing with unseen life just like our own. That being other than human being is not lower but simply other, alongside.