GIORDANO BRUNO
(Edwin Morgan)

innumerable worlds and worlds unmade,
half-made, the universe immense, displayed,
half-hidden, hidden, infinite, arrayed

with lights or lying back in hungry black
till knots unknot and darkest packs unpack
and pouring creatures run through every crack:

oh yes they do! why should we think it dead,
that vast ubiquitous flicker overhead?
The staff of life may not be only bread!

Why would the lord of life confine his writ
to this one ball of water, flesh, and grit?
You say it's special? Ah but transcending it

are specks we see, and specks we cannot see
but must imagine, in that immensity.
It is reason sets imagination free.

Configurations still unfigurable,
visions and visitations still invisible,
powers to come, still impermissible -

these give the slip to my incarceration.
Chains and a cell are but one suffering station.
Multiple worlds need multiple incarnation.

- But earthly powers were called for, and were shown.
There is a sequence when the torch is thrown:
smoke, screams, a little ash and bone.

I was puzzling over the meaning of the last verse, until I remembered that Bruno was burned at the stake for heresy. I'm sure that the first two lines are Bruno's. I'll try to confirm this.