Thank you one and all!
FIVE SCIENTIFIC SONNETS
for unscientific occasions
The
steely ribbons vanish as they meet
In
some obscurely comprehended state
Toward
which my curious, uneasy feet
Might
hasten, but half welcome its retreat.
Meanwhile
your train with loud belligerent haste
Pursues
the focus back to where I wait,
But to no purpose. Standing face to face
The
tracks, and we, shall keep our proper place.
We
two shall run together side by side,
The
ties between us neither love nor hate,
No
wider by an inch, but no less wide,
Held
at arm’s length by reticence, or pride;
Until the racing years outstrip the urge
To derail the cars of
custom and converge.
CHANCE AND NECESSITY
Beauty? I’ve seen enough. It’s in our genes
To
set us up as victor or as victim:
A cunning
gash of crimson in a fly-trap;
Plumage to lure the hen, and then the hunter.
It’s
integral to nature’s little jokes:
False eyes that flutter on a moth’s bright wing.
Lizards
that alter colour with their company,
Old leaves that don the motley as they die.
No
doubt. And yet I look at you with eyes
Washed clean of other faces, other bodies.
You
arc a smile between us and my brain
Short-circuits,
all my pretty theories staked
On
loaded dice: Once in a million lies
Nature
can throw a sport whose beauty’s true.
ENTROPY
They
call it middle age, a ripe condition
In
which the body’s energy and girth
Are
well disposed: a decorous fruition
Of forces too unruly since my birth.
The
blood is off the boil, the sinew’s tension
Slackened a notch or two, as is the belt.
The
proud old trouble-maker’s in declension,
A
relic of an urge obliquely felt.
But
sap’s on the rise again! A hot transfusion
Scalds
its familiar course to every part
And
cosmic forces enter in collusion
To serve a tardy summons on my heart.
What freshly minted torment is to be
The plunder and the price
of ecstasy?
ASTRONAUT
Wary,
encapsulated, you pursue
The wayward spiral of your eccentric orbit.
Your
hand extended touches me alive
And
then retracts, tenuous, tenacious,
A
slender fist clutching some particle
As
souvenir; perhaps, when you’re alone,
To
turn this way and that against the light,
A
small enigma worth a moment’s musing.
Take
it and welcome, girl! I’d not object
If
curiosity should send you back
A
dozen times or more to pillage from
This
desolate terrain a hoard of trophies
Your
fancy might assemble into some
Exotic
asteroid you'd claimed for science.
RELATIVITY
“Perhaps we came
together at some timeless meeting point,
irresponsible, irrepressible fellow-children of the
universe.”
One
glowing instant plummeting through space
At
light-speed bears us radiant in its arc;
The
stars are swallowed by our giddy pace
And
disappear into the empty dark.
How
swift we travel! In a blazing gyre
We’ll
circumnavigate the rim of time,
Return,
and reignite the astral fire
That
launched us on the journey of this rhyme.
Are
we too late? Is this our galaxy,
Burnt
out, a whirl of cinders, cold and black?
No
smouldering ember of the ecstasy
That
spun us round the universe and back?
Then onward, fellow-traveller! Our flight
Has stolen with it all there was of light!
John Whiting
