A KISS IN SPACE

         That the picture

       in The Times is a blur

     is itself an accuracy.  Where

   this has happened is so remote

     that clarity would misrepresent

   not only distance but our feeling

     about distance: just as

   the first listeners at the telephone

     were somehow reassured to hear

   static that interfered with hearing

     (funny word, static, that conveys

   the atom's restlessness), we're

     not even now--at the far end

   of the century--entirely ready

     to look to satellites for mere

         resolution.  When the Mir

       invited the first American

     astronaut to swim in the pool

   of knowledge with Russians, he floated

     exactly as he would have in space

   stations of our own: no lane

     to stay in, no line to determine

   the deep end, Norman Thagard

     hovered on the ceiling something

   like an angel in a painting

     (but done without the hard

   outlines of Botticelli) or like

      a seraph's sonogram, a guess,

   and turned to Yelena Kondakova

     as his cheek received her kiss.

         And in this

       too the blur made sense: a kiss

     so grave but gravity-free, untouched

   by Eros but nevertheless

     out of the usual orbit, must

   make a heart shift focus.  The very

     grounding in culture (they gave him bread

   and salt, as Grandmother would a guest

     at her dacha; and hung the Stars

   and Stripes in a stiff crumple

     because it would not fall), the very

   Russianness of the bear hugs was

     dizzily universal: for who

   knows how to signal anything

     new without a ritual?

         Not the kitchen-table

       reader (child of the Cold War,

     of 3x5 cards, carbon copies,

   and the manila folder), who takes a pair

     of scissors--as we do when the size

   of some idea surprises--and clips

     this one into a rectangle

   much like her piece of toast.  There:

     it's saved, to think of later.

   Yet it would be unfair

     to leave her looking smug; barely

   a teenager when she watched, on

     her snowy TV screen, a man

   seeming to walk on the moon, she's

     learned that some detail--

         Virtual Reality or e-mail,

       something inexplicable and

     unnatural--is always cropping up

   for incorporation in what's human.

     What ought to make it manageable,

   and doesn't quite, is the thought

     of humans devising it.  She'll

   remember Norman Thagard in June,

     when the Mir (meaning Peace: but how

   imagine this without agitation?)

     docks with the Atlantis (meaning

   the island Plato mentioned first

     and, like him, did not disappear

   without a splash), to shuttle

     the traveller back home--or

        to whatever Earth has become.


             from A Kiss In Space (1999)