“Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars –
mere globs of gas atoms.
Nothing is “mere.” I too can see the stars on a desert night,
and feel them. But do I see less or more ?
The vastness of the heavens
stretches my imagination –
stuck on this carousel my little eye can catch
one million year old light…
What is the pattern, or the meaning, or the
why? It does not do harm to the mystery to know a little about it.
For far more marvelous is the truth than any artists of the past imagined!
Why do the poets of the present not speak of it ?
What men are poets who can
speak of Jupiter as if he were like a man,
but if he is an immense spinning
sphere of methane and ammonia must be silent ?”
-R.P. Feynman
QUARK OF FATE
Since we ourselves learned how to create,
We’ve pondered our night sky’s creation.
“Twinkle, Twinkle,” was the song we sang,
Till Science showed stars are condensate
Of dust and background radiation
From the silent light of the Big Bang.
We thought their movements controlled our fate,
Reflecting Divine machination –
Shining destinies placed out to hang –
But Physics has informed us of late,
Through sub-atomic perspication,
Uncertainty’s the first law which sprang
From the Chaos that fostered our state,
And this precludes predestination;
Phenomenology’s the harangue.
Dwarfed by the studies that make us great,
Adrift in cosmic segregation,
We find quark-serpents sharpest of fang.