"The vast onion of the actual"

The vast onion of the actual:
The universe, the galaxy,
The solar system, and the earth,
And life, and human life, and men’s
Relationships, and men, and each man ...
History seeping from capsule
To capsule, from periphery
To center, and outward again ...
The sparkling quanta of events,
The pulsing wave motion of value ...


From "The Phoenix and the Tortoise," The Collected Longer Poems of Kenneth Rexroth, New Directions, 1970, 77-78. Excerpts from this poem are online at Bureau of Public Secrets.

Scenography of the Copernican world system from the Harmonia Macrocosmica of Andreas Cellarius, 1660.