The Science of Poetry
Quantum physics has become philosophical ipecac
people take a spoonful
and throw up half-digested metaphysics.
Casual passers-by see this splatter
and mistake it for abstract expressionist science
or simply science.
Who can resist?
Now they give us superstrings
adding resonance to the marvelous
images of the infinite hive
which contradicts the now.
To hear a symphony an organism must cradle the notes
collecting each one
with atomic fingers
storing them in a vault of light
without walls
molecular hands opening again and again to receive more.
Bind those hands now
the magician misdirects
unconnected sounds and silences
a death and resurrection show
the escape artist escapes
and leads you through a trap door
to the past
or the future,
two scantily clad assistants
whom the magician
locks steamer trunks
going nowhere
we never forget them,
they continue to reappear
while the orchestra plays,
building our suspense.
Every note is a hero
traveling the sacred round
separation, initiation,
return.
Stop a violin string at any instant and what do you get?
A paradox for Zeno if he had an ear.
And that quantum cat?
Death-Life
Love-Death
Bitter-Sweet
Mind-Breath.
The form you think you can touch,
the vibrating string,
the purring cat,
the Big Bang that happened
precisely in the center of your heart,
a potential for form released like arrows
from cells respiring
a potential that came from the lyre of the sun
another locus of the Bang.
I cannot isolate an object in space
in words, I cannot isolate an emotion
a thought, it all happened
now-not-now.
I play the superstrings of the lyre
I fire the arrows of infinite distance
moving nothing
everything
moving.
Every poet knows this.