Sunday/Copus

Julia Copus writes poem and children stories.

She is known for the highly imaginative thrust of her poems, which explore everything from the nature of time to quantum physics. As the poet R. V. Bailey said of her work: “Copus has great leaping complex visions, but she’s nevertheless reliably attached to reality, to the oddness, the innocent simplicity of things, especially as they relate to humans”. In the opening lines of “Atrophy” the speaker reminds us that, like inanimate objects, we too are made of spinning atoms, and “our skin and cells and vital organs / are a lattice-work of small vibrations” that cannot help but “correspond” with the vibrations of others. She therefore warns against social isolation, especially in old age, implying that if we cease to hear the “music” contained in the “web of sounds” within us and “sit / alone, by ourselves, in the dark, at the edge”, we deny the proven, physical interconnectedness of humans. We also risk becoming one of those lonely souls, whose atrophied arms and legs (and minds) have all but forgotten the intricate yet playful dances (“foxtrot, quickstep, pas de deux”) they once performed with such ease. (TLS)

Atrophy


Even human tissue’s made of atoms,
bits of energy in cyclic motion:
our skin and cells and vital organs
are a lattice-work of small vibrations,
a web of sounds or notes which correspond
with all the other music that goes on.
So why, when we refuse to be drawn
or even to listen but choose instead to sit
alone, by ourselves, in the dark, at the edge
of the open floor, are we surprised
to find at length our purplish hearts
have stiffened and our limbs that once
gleamed with infinite possible gestures
– foxtrot, quickstep, pas de deux –
have set themselves into the narrow shape
of our chores, like late-night caretakers
who find themselves, after the music’s gone,
walking behind their baffled brooms
stiffly, left, right, left, through emptied halls?


JULIA COPUS (2001)