Copernicus

Who doesn’t know how
doubt lifts the hem of its nightgown

to reveal another inch of thigh
before the face of faith?

I once didn’t. I once thought I was
my own geometry,
my own geocentric planet

spinning like a ballerina, alone
at the center of the universe, at the command of a god
opening my music box
with his dirty mouth. He said

Let there be light—
And I thought I was the light.

I was a man’s failed imagination.

Now I know what appears
as the motion of Heaven
is just the motion of Earth.

Not stars.
Not whatever I want.

Reprinted from All the Flowers Kneeling (Penguin, 2022). Copyright © by Paul Tran. Reprinted with the permission of the author.