Song of Two Worlds

By Alan Lightman

“VERDICT A vivid and moving book-length narrative poem that places the reader inside of a universe of wonder; of interest to poetry readers and beyond.” —Library Journal

From the author of international bestseller Einstein's Dreams and National Book Award nominee The Diagnosis.

After decades of living “hung like a dried fly,” emptied and haunted by his past, the narrator, a man who has lost his faith in all things following a mysterious personal tragedy, awakens one morning revitalized and begins a Dante-like journey to find something to believe in, first turning to the world of science and then to the world of philosophy, religion, and human life. As his personal story is slowly revealed, little by little, we confront the great questions of the cosmos and of the human heart, some questions with answers and others without. An exciting new illustrated edition of a unique narrative poem.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Red Hen Press
• Release date: Feb 10, 2017
• ISBN: 9781597095846

Alan Lightman

Alan Lightman is a physicist, novelist, and essayist. He was educated at Princeton University and at the California Institute of Technology, where he received a PhD in theoretical physics. Lightman is the author of five novels, including the international bestseller Einstein’s Dreams, two collections of essays, a book-­length narrative poem, and several books on science. His writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Granta, The New Yorker, and The New York Review of Books, among other publications. 

Book preview

Preface

I would like to tell the story of the remarkable genesis of this new Red Hen edition of Song of Two Worlds. The first edition, illustrated using a few photographs, was published in 2009 by AK Peters of Boston. In late September 2014, I received an unexpected letter from Ajai Narendran, who introduced himself as a teacher at a school in Bangalore, India, the Srishti School of Art, Design, and Technology. Mr. Narendran was using my book in his classroom and told me that one of his students, Derek Domnic D’souza, was so inspired by the book that he began doing penand-ink illusrations of the chapters. Mr. Narendran described his student as a gifted boy with amazing skills at drawing/sketching … a self-taught artist. Attached to the teacher’s letter were a few of his student’s drawings. I was so taken with the beauty, imagination, and whimsy of these drawings that I contacted my literary agent, Deborah Schneider, to see if we might explore the possibility of a new edition of the book illustrated by Mr. D’souza. Happily, Red Hen Press in Pasadena, California, was as struck by Mr. D’souza’s drawings as I was, and the result is this book. I believe that the great Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore, whose Gitanjali was part of the inspiration for my own book, would have been pleased with this collaboration.

—ALAN LIGHTMAN, October 2016

PART I

Questions with Answers

1

Awake—

What are these quick shots of warmth,

Fractals of forests

That wind through my limbs?

Fragrance of olive and salt taste of skin,

Razz-tazz and clackety sound?

Figures and shapes slowly wheel past my view,

Villas and deserts, distorted faces,

Children, my children—

Distant, the pink moons of my feet.

What rules do they follow?

I think movement, they wondrously move,

Moons flutter and shake.

I probe the hills and the ruts of my face—

Now I grow large, now

I grow small, as the waves

Of sensation break over my shore.

There, a gnarled tree I remember,

A stone vessel, the curve of a hill.

What is the hour?

Some silence still sleeps

In my small sleeping room—

Is it end or beginning?

2

Have I awakened?

For decades, it seems, I have slept in a cave,

Hung like a dried fly

Sucked of all insides and faith.

Am I awake

After so many foldings unfoldings,

The loose flaps and threads?

Something is stirring, some newness,

A flail, buzz, and heave.

Welcome, this sharp morning blast—

Pleasure floods through me

While tears sting my eyes,

Veins fill with promised life.

Breathing, I breathe and I feel,

My skin bristles.

3

Footsteps—

It’s Abbas, dear Abbas.

I know that old shuffle,

Grey stubble, haired mole,

Yellowing teeth.

Clatter of pots in the kitchen.

He’s making some tea.

Are you awake? he roars.

Smells of hot peppers and onions

With cinnamon, hazelnut cake,

Baklava, sugared cream.

I rise from my bed, middle-aged,

Balding, the white scar on my arm,

Shrunken chest,

Losing more weight every year—

In thirteen, by my estimate, I’ll weigh zero.

My spindly legs stiff as I stand,

Light from the night hallway,

Red glint of my eyes.

Am I still sleeping?

I dreamed of Zafir,

Weighing the sand on the beach.

4

Abbas is muttering.

Standing, I look for my paper and pen,

Books scattered about. Inhale—

I breathe in my ancestral home,

Turquoise rough stucco and terra cotta–tiled floors,

Earth colors, arches and airy rooms,

All crumbling now. There, the tinny piano

My mother once played. Here, the brass compass.

Abbas serves breakfast,

Eats at his small bench,

Belching and smiling.

Through an arched window,

I gaze at the wide rutted steps

To the terrace and down to the sea.

Garden of aloe and sharpened spine puyas,

The dune evening primrose, the prickly white poppies,

The red bougainvilleas that wind up the walls—

Shadowy shapes in the dim light of dawn.

There, bitter orange trees,

Now smelling vanilla and powdery.

Olive groves, gift of my father,

Like everything here.

Parentless now. I was a parent myself,

Father and husband.

5

Then faintly, the call of the muezzin,

The nasalized song.

Abbas