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	Before beginning only Awonawilaona existed,

	no one else with him in the vast space of time

	but the black darkness on all sides

	in the space of time.

	And he brought forth his thought into space…

		Nothing existed, neither did nothingness exist,

		Between day and night there was no frontier.

		Everything at the beginning was hidden…

— Ernesto Cardenal Cosmic Canticle, Cantiga 1

I am struck with the creation stories that begin with a gesture of art. The song, the word, the sculpted gesture. In the Midewiwin tradition of the Ojibway, we are taught that the first sound was the sound of the rattle, and indeed scientists posit that the universe could only have become differentiated as a result of some force moving through the smooth early universe and causing matter to lump together, making it possible for bodies to form and grow separately from one another.

If that is true (you know what I mean) then the human attraction towards song maybe is a primal urge, infusing matter, to find this song or gesture again, to capture that echo the faded sound, movement glimpsed in the dreaming eye, a mark in the depthless blackness of a sleeping eyelid.

To discover this moment, we would need to sing the song backwards, in a sense recite the prayer of creation from below and in so doing restore the unity of force and matter.

Everything we know about the expansion of the universe says that we are always growing further and further apart from each other, separation initiated by song. Are we seeking something in music and speech that can draw us back together again?

In Cosmic Canticle, Cardenal inventories creation stories that have to do with the thoughts and dreaming and song of the creators. Whether it is Awonawilaona or P’an Ku (“…First there was the great cosmic egg. Within the egg/there was chaos. And P’an Ku floated above the chaos”) or Na Arean (seated in space/like a cloud floating over nothingness”), the poem rocks between traditional stories of becoming and the scientific ones, and all those stories blur together.

The story of Na Arean from Polynesia is like this:

“In the beginning, Na Arean sat alone like a cloud floating in nothingness. He didn’t sleep, for there was no sleep. He wasn’t hungry, since hunger had not been created. So he remained for a long time, until a thought came into his mind. He said to himself, “I will make a thing.” So he made water in his left hand, and dabbled it with his right until it was muddy; then he rolled the mud flat and sat upon it. Then a great swelling grew in his forehead, until on the third day it burst, and a little man sprang forth. “You are my thought,” said Na Arean. Your name is Na Arean the younger. Na Arean the Younger then proceeded to straighten out the elements of the earth.”

And the stories of the world created from song puts me in mind of this classic from C.S Lewis:

“It was a Lion. Huge, shaggy and bright, it stood facing the risen sun. Its mouth was wide open in song and it was pacing to and fro about the empty land. And as Aslan walked and sang, the valley grew green with grass. It spread out from the Lion like a pool. It ran up the sides of the little hills like a wave.

In a few minutes it was creeping up the lower slopes of the distant mountains, making that young world every moment softer. A light wind could now be heard ruffling the grass which was sprinkled with daisies and buttercups. Along the river bank, willows were growing; on the other side, tangles of flowering currant, lilac, wild rose and rhododendron closed them in.

All this time the Lion’s song and his stately prowl, to and fro, backward and forward, continued. It was clear that all the things were coming “out of the Lion’s head.” When you listened to his song you heard the things he was making up; and when you looked around you, you saw them all. This was Aslan’s world of Narnia.”