Weekly Poem: ‘Luminous Great Mass’

By Peter O’Leary

Holy Trinity Airship
billows a

chrys-
elephantine
cave Louis Sullivan, Arch-
itect, lord master,
conceived of
in the hollow of power.

He swells.
I am his balloonist
balancing an azimuth

as earth-apse I
orbit, robed in
hot gas & leather

fastened by a yolk-stalk
of gravity to gold-
end onions nozzling heavens

whose suns are stomachs
with churches in their navels.

Each we are priests
as aeronauts at the vestibules,
& enter the cavity:

space, self, organ; celest-

ial nave
bellies

stars sailors name saints
and adore—

their egress is bitter
weeping, their praise pure
Russian form:

a cathedral,
my inner orrery.

“Luminous Great Mass” is from_ Peter O’Leary’s collection, “Watchfulness” (Spuyten Duyvil, 2001). His most recent book of poetry is “Depth Theology” (Georgia, 2006). His critical study, “Gnostic Contagion: Robert Duncan & the Poetry of Illness” was published by Wesleyan in 2002. O’Leary lives in Berwyn, Ill., and teaches at the School of the Art Institute.

“Luminous Great Mass” is also included in the Poetry Foundation’s Chicago Poetry Tour, a multimedia tour of poetry written in and about Chicago. (Disclosure: The Poetry Foundation also funds the NewsHour’s poetry coverage.)

Featuring the work of a range of Chicago poets past and present and addressing a variety of neighborhoods and landmarks—for O’Leary, that neighborhood is Bucktown—the tour includes archival and contemporary recordings of poets and scholars, local music and historic photographs.

The tour can be taken online or downloaded at www.poetryfoundation.org, and is available for download via iTunes. The tour will also be featured on the City of Chicago’s official tourism Web site, www.explorechicago.org.