Cosmic Canticle

``Background radiation allows us to deduce that the universe / is harmoniously curved / like a woman.'' This nearly 500-page poem of Father Cardenal, a priest who was Nicaragua's Minister of Culture during the Sandinistas' years in power, superficially recalls Genesis and some of the Old Testament and prophetic writings, and also peruses contemporary scientists and science writers such as Lewis Thomas, Carl Sagan, Stephen Hawking, Richard Feynman and Richard Dawkins, at times cited by name, in an attempt to justify the ways of God to Nicaragua and Latin America. The theology--largely homage to the Earth-goddess--seems literary, perhaps derived from Robert Graves. The text, as translator Lyons has rendered it, suggests the lecture outline of an eclectic, New Age professor. This is not a wholly credible synthesis of religious feeling and political engagement on the order of Milton or Blake, but instead the work of an amiable popularizer, seeking--yet not always reaching--the force of authentic prophecy or discovery: ``Man is society. / The loneliness we suffer comes from being only individuals. / Happiness is others.'' (Dec.)