The Life and Death (and Life) of Galoom

Diana Senechal

Yellow. A swirl of asters. Cry "galoom"
so that the newborn spheres may have their laughs.
A strange beginning. Twist your brows. Could this
absence of sense mean swift imploding sense,
junipers, windy wilds, a swirling sphere,
Neptune ablaze? I think so. So I am.

No, it's not fair. You ask me who I am?
You see, I come from Neptune, where "galoom"
jumps from the cries of horses, whom the sphere
severed from their own speech. An island laughs:
an island of wild horses, robbed of sense,
a sense of islandness, wilder than this.

A loneliness. Aha! You figure this
notion will blaze the way to where I am?
A detour, nothing more. If you can sense
years of lost music in the word "galoom,"
soon you will hear the yellow in the laughs:
jaundiced flickers leaping from sphere to sphere.

Justice objects, saying: without a sphere,
a tale is nothing. I agree with this,
since comets, too, have tails. From ghoulish laughs
never will I spin yarns of who I am:
yearning to speak, I started with "galoom,"
and soon will sing the roundness and the sense.

As I remember how we swirled, I sense
just how your sounds have jostled with this sphere.
Yell out your rhythms. If the word "galoom,"
awkward at first, boldens, then think of this:
not from Neptune did I learn where I am.
Silence taught me, and swirls of foreign laughs.

So stumbling leads to sense. Loneliness laughs,
and slowly this strange room starts to make sense.
No harm in that. To find out who I am,
just ask me for a light. A glowing sphere,
astonished, reddens. Could it be that this
yawning planet has room for my galoom?

Vitally red. A sphere of asters tinged
with questions. Radiant iambic sense!
My poor galoom. A lightened language laughs.