Science poetry--or verse that is just informative about nature

ViewsofMars

Spring And All
by William Carlos Williams

By the road to the contagious hospital
under the surge of the blue
mottled clouds driven from the
northeast—a cold wind. Beyond, the
waste of broad, muddy fields
brown with dried weeds, standing and fallen

patches of standing water
the scattering of tall trees

All along the road the reddish
purplish, forked, upstanding, twiggy
stuff of bushes and small trees
with dead, brown leaves under them
leafless vines—

Lifeless in appearance, sluggish
dazed spring approaches—

They enter the new world naked,
cold, uncertain of all
save that they enter. All about them
the cold, familiar wind—

Now the grass, tomorrow
the stiff curl of wildcarrot leaf

One by one objects are defined—
It quickens: clarity, outline of leaf

But now the stark dignity of
entrance—Still, the profound change
has come upon them: rooted they
grip down and begin to awaken

ViewsofMars

Two absolutely great poems.

Stream Of Life
by Rabindranath Tagore

The same stream of life that runs through my veins night and day
runs through the world and dances in rhythmic measures.

It is the same life that shoots in joy through the dust of the earth
in numberless blades of grass
and breaks into tumultuous waves of leaves and flowers.

It is the same life that is rocked in the ocean-cradle of birth
and of death, in ebb and in flow.

I feel my limbs are made glorious by the touch of this world of life.
And my pride is from the life-throb of ages dancing in my blood this moment.


and

For the Anniversary of My Death
by W. S. Merwin

Every year without knowing it I have passed the day
When the last fires will wave to me
And the silence will set out
Tireless traveller
Like the beam of a lightless star

Then I will no longer
Find myself in life as in a strange garment
Surprised at the earth
And the love of one woman
And the shamelessness of men
As today writing after three days of rain
Hearing the wren sing and the falling cease
And bowing not knowing to what.
###

ViewsofMars

October (section I)
by Louise Glück


Is it winter again, is it cold again,
didn't Frank just slip on the ice,
didn't he heal, weren't the spring seeds planted

didn't the night end,
didn't the melting ice
flood the narrow gutters

wasn't my body
rescued, wasn't it safe

didn't the scar form, invisible
above the injury

terror and cold,
didn't they just end, wasn't the back garden
harrowed and planted--

I remember how the earth felt, red and dense,
in stiff rows, weren't the seeds planted,
didn't vines climb the south wall

I can't hear your voice
for the wind's cries, whistling over the bare ground

I no longer care
what sound it makes

when was I silenced, when did it first seem
pointless to describe that sound

what it sounds like can't change what it is--

didn't the night end, wasn't the earth
safe when it was planted

didn't we plant the seeds,
weren't we necessary to the earth,

the vines, were they harvested?
###

marcus

Imagine there's no Heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace

You may say that I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one

...
...

Tomorrow (9 oct) is J.L.'s birthday. Google pulled a nice logo in his honor. He would have been 70.

ViewsofMars

Published in Atlantic Monthly - 2010
By the Sea
by Maura Stanton

The spears on the plain of Troy
Glittered like things that hadn’t been invented—

Holiday tinsel, bristling antennas,
A cabinet of needles at the flu clinic—

And the sea was closer, only two miles away,
Gleaming like a strip of blue gel toothpaste.

That’s when a grasshopper, the size of a stapler,
Or perhaps a computer mouse, or a brick

Of cheddar cheese in your refrigerator,
Jumped from a crack outside the walled citadel,

Scaring a mother as she pressed the tip
Of a fibula through the cloth of her son’s tunic.

The fibula looked like a big, crude safety pin—
There are lots in museums, including hers,

For she dropped it into dry grass, and later on
Warriors trampled it into the clay clods

Of her fertile land, their shrieks and thrusts
As they stabbed her boy, dragged her by the hair,

Untelevised, but still remembered
By those who listened and then repeated

And repeated the same stories over and over
In hoarse voices, on clay tablets, in type, in pixels.
###

dx

By Richard Feynman:

There are the rushing waves
mountains of molecules
each stupidly minding its own business
trillions apart
yet forming white surf in unison

Ages on ages
before any eyes could see
year after year
thunderously pounding the shore as now.
For whom, for what?
On a dead planet
with no life to entertain.

Never at rest
tortured by energy
wasted prodigiously by the Sun
poured into space.
A mite makes the sea roar.

Deep in the sea
all molecules repeat
the patterns of one another
till complex new ones are formed.
They make others like themselves
and a new dance starts.
Growing in size and complexity
living things
masses of atoms
DNA, protein
dancing a pattern ever more intricate.

Out of the cradle
onto dry land
here it is
standing:
atoms with consciousness;
matter with curiosity.

Stands at the sea,
wonders at wondering: I
a universe of atoms
an atom in the Universe.

ViewsofMars

Brilliant! "Perfection" dx, thank you. Richard Feynman When a poem is that great I say, "Cracking the egg!" Beautiful is each day that unfolds. And so it is for me. Again, a warm thank you for inspiring me to work on a new poem .

Bye the way, Charles Darwin's great-great-granddaughter, Ruth Padel (1), has written some poetry I like. Here is a recent poem from 'Darwin - A Life in Poems" by Ruth Padel.

Charles Darwin walks in tropical vegetation for the first time, aged 22

LIKE GIVING TO A BLIND MAN EYES

He’s standing in Elysium. Palm feathers, a green
dream of fountain against blue sky. Banana fronds,
slack rubber rivulets, a canopy of waterproof tearstain
over his head. Pods and racemes of tamarind.
Follicle, pinnacle; whorl, bole and thorn.

“I expected a good deal. I had read Humboldt
and was afraid of disappointment.”
What if he’d stayed at home? “How utterly vain
such fear is, none can tell but those who have seen
what I have today.” A small rock off Africa –

alone with his enchantment. So much and so unknown.
“Not only the grace of forms
and rich new colours: it’s the numberless –
& confusing – associations rushing on the mind
that produce the effect.” He walks through hot damp air

and tastes it like the breath of earth; like blood.
He is possessed by chlorophyll. By the calls of unknown birds.
He wades into sea and scares an octopus. It puffs black hair
at him, turns red – as hyacinth – and darts for cover.
He sees it watching. He’s discovered

something wonderful! He tests it against coloured card
and the sailors laugh. They know that girly blush!
He feels a fool – but look, he’s touched Volcanic rock
for the first time. And Coral on its native stone.
“Often at Edinburgh have I gazed at little pools

of water left by tide. From tiny Corals of our shores
I pictured larger ones. Little did I know how exquisite,
still less expect my hope of seeing them to come true.
Never, in my wildest castles of the air, did I imagine this.”
Lava must once have streamed over the sea-floor here,

baking shells to white hard rock. Then a subterranean force
pushed everything up to make an island. His first evidence
of Volcano! Vegetation he’s never seen, every step a new surprise.
“New insects, fluttering about still newer flowers. It has been
for me a glorious day, like giving to a blind man eyes.” (2)

1. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal...l/457794a.html
2. http://www.ruthpadel.com/pages/mother_of_pearl.htm

makoto5

Here's one dealing with chemistry. It is from "Bushido: The Virtues of Rei and Makoto" (A. J. Stewart, 2005).

LAW OF CHEMISTRY

A black shank of hair hangs over his face
holding his anger in.
His glasses
are pushed low on his nose
letting his irritation out.

Frustration boils. Molecules want to
steam out at non-standard volume,
pressure, Mr. Damn
Avagadro can take his dumb gas laws
or not, who the hell cares?

I try again. It is
all in dynamic balance,
the pressure, the volume,
the CD is too much for me

I say squeeze to increase pressure
and of course volume gets
turned down, add heat
molecules jiggle faster and
anger happens and if
pressure is constant the
volume goes up. More heat,
more volume, or
more pressure
the damn rap is too loud

I react. First:

work it out
to standard temperature and pressure.
Cool, to correct for
differences, then go
from volume to moles,
from moles to molecules.

Just

think like a molecule, I waggle my fingers.

His eyes smoke.
They are beautiful but he will not
let himself work past his anger.


Stewart also has a more recent book of science-flavored poems ("Circle, Turtle, Ashes"; 2010), but most of these deal with limnology, not so much chemistry or physics.

fuzzyfelt

I’ve mentioned Erasmus Darwin’s poetry a couple of times in other threads, so thought I’d add to this thread.

“Darwin's final long poem, The Temple of Nature, was published posthumously in 1803. The poem was originally titled The Origin of Society. It is considered his best poetic work. It centres on his own conception of evolution. The poem traces the progression of life from micro-organisms to civilized society.” - wiki

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=T...page&q&f=false

marcus

MATH LOVE SONG ON YOUTUBE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTby_e4-Rhg

His every other word has a special meaning in mathspeak.
The song will surely win the girl's heart if she is a math grad student.

atyy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlfKdbWwruY

marcus

Enjoyed the Matt Harding youtube.
Did you happen to catch the name of the song, in the credits?
I wasn't sure what language it was if it was an actual language, maybe Brazilian Portuguese?

fuzzyfelt

"He also wrote the song "Praan" for Matt Harding's "Dancing 2008" viral video, which earned him the "Best Music Video" award at the Hollywood Music Awards.[10]"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garry_Schyman

If maths is included, Queneau and Roubaud, or Oulipo generally might interest, although less about nature, e.g.

http://moviesofmyself.typepad.com/ho...6/queneau.html

http://poetrywithmathematics.blogspo...nd-oulipo.html

http://uprightdown.com/blog/wp-conte...asthetime3.mp4

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Roubaud

marcus

Thanks fuzzyfelt.

I see at last! The song background for Matt Harding's dance montage is a poem by the famous poet Rabindrath Tagore "Gitanjali" or "Stream of Life" written in the Bengali language (also called Bangla) which is spoken in Bangladesh and some other parts of South Asia. And it was set to music by Shyman.

Personally I very much like a song performed by Pete Seeger and the Weavers which has the refrain "There is only one river, there is only one sea. And it flow through you. And it flows through me.

We are all one people, we are one and the same. We are all one spirit, we are all one name...."

I was able to find the lyrics to this on the web, but I could not find a youtube or any kind of audio freely available. Does anyone know of audio for that song?

It is somewhat similar in theme to the Rabindrath Tagore. But more humanity-centered and not so much universal life-centered.

gendou2

Here's one I wrote in 2009:

View Before Reading!

Hubble Deep Field

Little smudge here in the bottom left corner
A whole galaxy of suns and worlds and life!
A pea in the bowl of soup 93 billion light-years across

Seen here so young, new stars forming in frothy clumps
But that's all gone now, civilizations dead for 13 billion years
Their final cry; just a cupful of photons

9 million pixels are more than my heart can bare
How can it be only one thirteen-millionth of the sky?

Look but don't touch, a sky full of ghosts
Not but to weep for the loneliness of it

Roysun

The universe is an infinite amount of moments within one moment
The universe is an existence within an infinite amount of existences
Each moment is a different existence
The present is when time stops, the past no longer exists and the future has yet to exist and is constantly there

fuzzyfelt

Pleasure. Sorry I didn't look further, it is very nice. I don't mean to keep following you, but I think I've heard the song sung by Peter, Paul and Mary:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrTGg...eature=related
http://www.we7.com/#/artist/Peter-Yarrow/music/tracks