Giordano Bruno & poetry

It's almost impossible to get a good photo of the statue of Giordano Bruno that stands amidst the riotous flower stalls in the Campo di Fiori.

He's just too shadowed.

The same can be said about the man himself. His biographers say we don't understand him. It's hard to argue the basics, though. Bruno disagreed with the Church about whether the earth was at the center of the universe, with the sun and planets wheeling around us. They burned him for it in 1600. Many of his inquisitors no doubt knew he was right. That only made him more dangerous.

Here's part of Heather McHugh's poem, "What He Thought."

...Giordano Bruno, brought
to be burned in the public square
because of his offence against authority, which was to say
the Church. His crime was his belief
the universe does not revolve around
the human being: God is no
fixed point or central government
but rather is poured in waves, through
all things: all things
move...

Sometimes it takes a poem to understand.

To Be of Use, by Marge Piercy

"To Be of Use," by Marge Piercy, is a good poem for when you're feeling used up.

The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half submerged balls.

I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,
who do what has to be done, again and again.

I want to be with people who submerge
in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags along,
who stand in the line and haul in their places,
who are not parlor generals and field deserters
but move in a common rhythm
when the food must come in or the fire be put out.

The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.

"To be of use" by Marge Piercy © 1973, 1982.
From CIRCLES ON THE WATER © 1982 by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. and Middlemarsh, Inc.