Saturday, August 1, 2020

Aaron Peck : The Winds of Jupiter




In spite of our better selves
we say, ‘it is beautiful’
as if to imply that
our witness of it
confers a meaning
that its inherent
movements lack:

a sphere so terrifying
it could absorb 1,300 earths
clouds of marbled
orange and white
blue at the poles,

our sighting of which,
after Voyager passed,
changes nothing—
what we can picture
but not comprehend,

like the storm cloud
in its centre
itself the size of earth
which may rage
for decades,
or centuries,
and which was depicted
on the t-shirt I wore
as a boy—

*

imagines
the sun reflecting
off a shiny object
flung beyond
Mars, then swinging
past the asteroid belt
toward that hoary
sphere of wind,
a path that would take
less time to travel
than it takes
for a young boy to grow
in the remote reaches
of a remote country

*

And then
at eighteen
in musée d’Orsay,
I struggle to recall
more than 
turning the corner
to discover
Burial at Ornans,
a painting
I thought I disliked,
un
éclat de rire
a burst of
laughter,
I saw something
of myself in those figures,
in Courbet’s
anger—

*

What were the first
details I marked? The dog
glancing off, the drunken
priests with noses blooming
in rosacea, families more bored
than in mourning, the sinister
crucifix? No, it was
the mood the drab sky
that murmured its sigh
of complete and utter
capital unimportance.

*

Wind in the pines
a crowd in a
café parking lot
red sun against
hills, late summer

sounds from inside
chords thundering
from Steve Albini’s guitar
to signal the start
of his show—

I never knew 
such anger
within me.
Nor what pleasure
it provided.

*

The waves of Squally Point where
the lake bends toward
the city of Penticton
my father’s father threw his
tantrums and ate his roast beef
he insisted those winds
were the strongest
their waves crashing
on Antler’s Beach.
Of his funeral, years later,
I remember nothing.

*

Sagebrush
on the edge
of the mesa

a dull grey-green    
undulating toward
the lake, depths
of which
have yet to be
measured

*

“We just know enough
to know we were wrong”—
the temperature above
the 10,000 mile-wide red spot
averaged 25,000 Farenheit
at our last measurement,
theories that its shape
has diminished
since Galileo may yet
prove inaccurate: 
Yet, when Voyager flew by,
in the year of my birth,
its width
was 14,500 miles.

*

The immensity of the sphere,
as if it is watching us, is
unfathomable: its size, shape or
position in a cosmos in which
it is less than a spec, without
consciousness, we might say,
as if it is something ‘we’
have—an image of
storms along its northern
hemisphere, taken by
Juno on 3 November 2019
3,300 miles from the
atmosphere, itself suspended
in an abyss as it captures
the curve of the planet,
the storm clouds, waves
dangling off the edge.

*

No, it’s not the sky, it’s
the open grave into which
no one glances while the man
with the crucifix leers
directly at us

*

The pallbearers
in long-brimmed
hats port the
blanketed
coffin toward
its pit
at the bottom
center of the
picture

*

The wind along the lake
from a car, the hills
of the valley
heading toward
a small beach
between two willow trees

*

I watched 2001
in a cemented basement

the dead astronaut
in robotic arms

released
into infinite float

near Jupiter’s perturbed
moons

*

Metis
Adrastea
Amalthea
Thebe
Io
Europa
Ganymede
Callisto
Themisto
Leda
Himalia
Ersa
Pandia
Lysiethea
Elara
Dia
Carpo
S/2003 J 12 (lost)
Valetudo
Euporie
Eupheme
S/2003 J 18
S/2010 J 2
Thelxinoe
Euanthe
Helike
Orthosie
S/2017 J 7
S/2016 J 1
S/2017 J 3
locaste
S/2003 J 16 (lost)
Praxidike
Harpalyke
Mneme
Mermippe
Thyone
S/2017 J 9
Ananke
Herse
Aitne
S/2017 J 6
S/2011 J 1
Kale
Taygete
S/2003 J 19
Caldene
Philophrosyne
S/2003 J 10 (lost)
S/2003 J 23 (lost)
Eriome
Aoede
Kallichore
S/2017 J 5
S/2017 J 8
Kalyke
Carme
Callirrhoe
Eurydome
S/2017 J 2
Pasithee
S/2010 J 1
Kore
Cyllene
S/2011 J2
Eukelade
S/2017 J 1
S/2003 J 4 (lost)
Pasiphae
Hegemone
Arche
Isonoe
S/2003 J 9 (lost)
Eirene
Sinope
Sponde
Autonoe
Megaclite
S/2003 J 2 (lost)

*

The
marble
force
of wind
around which
they
orbit
seems
to
breathe

*

Off highway 97
a graveyard,

tombstones
in Chinese script
from when workers
laid tracks that
brought prosperity
to other men—

around it, nothing is left
except brittle grass

*

How similar
it felt
to this lack

of being
nowhere

what I had not
yet registered

as stupidity
which is
everywhere

And now
as I circumambulate
a museum
where
a friend
works

I cannot
quite
fathom
its quotidian
fact

*

That crowd
of mourners

on the right
the women

who cover
their face

have
in their drabness

windswept
dignity

*

And the king in his rage
is at times beautiful
only at a distance when his
violence and force are just
colors that make us ponder
our own mutual powerlessness
in an infinite span hurtling
toward even more wonders whose
energies again are expended
for no witness and letting go
in that imaginary drift
we can love what we thought
had tied us to our particular
landscapes but instead
unmoors us as we too
scatter with solar winds






Aaron Peck is a contributing editor at frieze magazine. He is also the author of a novella, The Bewilderments of Bernard Willis, a collaborative art book, Letters to the Pacific, and a monograph, Jeff Wall: North & West.

His work has appeared in Walrus magazine, New York Review of Books “Daily,” The Happy Reader, Artforum, Music & Literature, bookforum.com, The Halloween Review, The White Review and Joyland. This is his first published poem in over fifteen years.