Vertigo

Rowan Deer

whose skin has prickled
in the strange radiance 
of this extending dawn?

you find yourself
a sedimented weather system: a fever dream realized
powerless as a planet, infinite as a coastline

you find yourself
a molecular humanity: a new kind of fossil
ravenous as a seed and as brilliantly fetal

go visit your grancestors on a weekend
down at the hydrothermal vents
back before there was a weekend
back before the whys awakened
back before the sea became
too deep and too shallow

go ask the stars what things were like
back when they sent us the sky

now turn and see     
how the future made you
an idea of progress     
that mattered too much
or a boltzmann brain     
that won’t matter enough

then yearn and see     
how the future makes you
the space to reweave your poem     
into far softer cloth

you find yourself
embroidering hot tumbling aeons: eye of the elements
carrying the time left to us: remainder and inheritance

you find yourself
unravelling dark constellations: sifting dreams yet unspun
borne by the amniotic gold of a low-slung winter sun

but can you find yourself
in the ancient bones of a future 
unearthing human hands
that will have drawn something more 
than another line in the sand?

The Science

By moving from primordial hydrothermal vents to a future in which humanity has become a ‘sedimented weather system’, ‘a new kind of fossil,’ or simply a Boltzmann brain, the poem engages with the vertiginous feeling produced by apprehending the infinite processes (evolutionary, thermodynamic, astronomical) that contain us. Effects of scale and complexity (like an infinite coastline) reveal the relativity of human concepts, so that the sea becomes simultaneously too deep (rising sea levels) and too shallow (unable to absorb the pollution we pour into it), while humanity both dwarfs and is dwarfed by nonhuman processes, becoming simultaneously powerless and unavoidably planetary.

The Poet

Rowan Deer is a writer and editor based in Berlin, Germany. She has held postdoctoral research positions at the Rachel Carson Center (Germany) and Harvard University (USA), working at the intersection of literary studies and the environmental humanities. Her writing engages with how ecological crises are transforming our understanding of the world and our place within it. Her book, Radical Animism: Reading for the End of the World, is published by Bloomsbury.

Next poem: Categorical Desire by Norazha Paiman