Bled Workshops in Physics Vol. 19, No. 2
A
Proceedings to the 21 st Workshop What Comes Beyond ... (p. 397) Bled, Slovenia, June 23-July 1, 2018

20 June
Astri Kleppe
Tonight they all spring into blossom, Lilacs, Bird Cherry
with strands of willow, weaving their way to the beginning; How it all was meant to be.
Birdsong, sound of running steps, of tea and cups;
Soon the larvae will be heading for the bird cherry, enfolding it in silvery cocoons; and soon
warm nights of August will bring darkness, for Orion to be seen.
But in this night of early June it's all in ecstasy, in vigil for the blossom;
No one sleeps, the birds, the flies are all awake.
Who are you then, I asked the Lilacs
We are strangers here, the answer came,
and we belong to no one
But tell me who you are, I begged
And flower clusters sprinkled over me,
a waterfall
ofpetals,
We just arrived, tonight, what more is there to say?
398 Astri Kleppe II
A loose dream from a corner of the universe is driving towards us, our island; Clouds
awakening of granite and cadavers, blue and earth;
A boomerang towards The Milky Way, its icy stars
and howling wolves, and tightly curved
around the little heat
from our own speed. We are but animals
of auguries, ofhope and salt;
and though great dreams
ofLeibniz,
Alan Guth and Hubble led us,
it was other tokens
that the Universe imagined,
ofanother
kind;
And suddenly this otherness sticks out: a tree
With roots in galaxies and whispers, in galactic summer, leaves that dance in morning breeze and drizzle, with a scent of seed and clover, pregnant visions,
over paths through rain-gray grass.
Beware of those who tread on dew and stop under that tree. So slowly night is turning, in this space of the improbable, a darkness where a tree can grow from nothing, rise with flower buds and day.
It was in June, an early morning in a sea before the blue of skies, before all grass and oxygen; but still a sea, a meadow, all its flowers.
20 June 399
III
They gave us this, a place so wonderful,
our garden with its tender plants and trees of darkest mold with branches stretching out to heaven, all the blue.
And over time we built our house,
with kitchen windows with a view of oaks, and in the winter nights the dog lay by the oven. And from stone and dust and clay we built our roads, from sand and metal
the first street light, zippers and TV.
The dogs got leashes, we got blogs, so marvelous our garden, and so tall the skyscrapers;
In street dust and the growing noise we saw the progress, in the dying trees the halved diversity of everything.
Do you remember all these woods? So vast and wild, the rugged mountains roaring over trees and oceans. O, the ocean! Waving waves around the boat, like fingers through a golden field, the time when the first crops were grown.
This was our Earth, with seas
and meadows, timothy,
all life born within this triangle
where ice and clouds meet seas
and rivers.
It was ours.
We had all this,
the grass, the water, sky
and clouds.
Our garden
was complete.
400 Astri Kleppe
IV
The elements are four, they said, it's Fire, Earth and Air and Water.
Air is made of eyes, the Earth is made of red and green, and Water shapes our dreams.
Only Fire, that's the Sun, is still unstained. No smog is registered
in solar atmospheres, no drought, no poison or depletion of the soil. Fire alone is pure. It burns, it is; It shall not want.
Three things, they said to me, are good things. Four is still OK, and five is not so bad, but six
is already too much, and seven is pure waste.
But seven, I protested, is a lovely number, seven good things is far more than three.
Three or seven, never mind, they said.
Our only worry
is when letters are forgotten
or when too many
are added;
And in the early morning
flocks of black deer
ran beneath us, dark clouds
of pure music
on the newgrown grass.