The study of acoustic oscillations that make the sun ring like a bell.
No hole at the center,
so how do you ring?
Surface oscillations
and low, thrumming waves
roll across you, or shudder
at your deepest range…
One need not be empty
to sound. You’re the stop
in the cosmos’s hollow,
the odd ball of particles
hung in the bell
whose gold dome, hammered fresh
and still smoking, lies stretched
far above us. The top
of this rounded container,
sloped down to a rim
I’ll call wide open “lips”
brimmed with terrible ends
and beginnings, new clappers
of bronze, which will take
giant hold when you’re gone
(they are forging already)
I can’t—listening—see
being stuck in the dumb
middle dust of the gong-haunted,
unsettled chamber
between your last clang
and the vibrating dome.