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

ViewsofMars

I just read on the BBC -2 May 2011 ,Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden dead (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-13256676). The article states, "Bin Laden was accused of being behind a number of atrocities, including the attacks on New York and Washington on 11 September 2001." This poem is in memory of those who died and left behind their loved ones.

WHEN THE TOWERS FELL by Galway Kinnell

From our high window we saw the towers
with their bands and blocks of light
brighten against a fading sunset,
saw them at any hour glitter and live
as if the spirits inside them sat up all night
calculating profit and loss, saw them reach up
to steep their tops in the until then invisible
yellow of sunrise, grew so used to them
often we didn’t see them, and now,
not seeing them, we see them.

The banker is talking to London.
Humberto is delivering breakfast sandwiches.
The trader is already working the phone.
The mail sorter has started sorting the mail.
...povres et riches
...poor and rich
Sages et folz, prestres et laiz
Wise and foolish, priests and laymen
Nobles, villains, larges et chiches
Noblemen, serfs, generous and m
Petiz et grans et beaulx et laiz
Short and tall and handsome and homely

The plane screamed low down lower Fifth Avenue
lifted at the Arch, someone said, shaking the dog walkers
in Washington Square Park, drove for the north tower,
struck with a heavy thud, releasing a huge bright gush
of blackened fire, and vanished, leaving a hole
the size and shape a cartoon plane might make
if it had passed harmlessly through and were flying away now,
on the far side, back into the realm of the imaginary.

Some with torn clothing, some bloodied,
some limping at top speed like children
in a three-legged race, some half dragged,
some intact in neat suits and dresses,
they straggle out of step up the avenues,
each dusted to a ghostly whiteness,
their eyes rubbed red as the eyes of a Zahoris,
who can see the dead under the ground.

Some died while calling home to say they were O.K.
Some died after over an hour spent learning they would die.
Some died so abruptly they may have seen death from within it.
Some broke windows and leaned out and waited for rescue.
Some were asphyxiated.
Some burned, their very faces caught fire.
Some fell, letting gravity speed them through their long moment.
Some leapt hand in hand, the elasticity in last bits of love-time letting — I wish
I could say — their vertical streaks down the sky happen more lightly.

At the high window, where I’ve often stood
to escape a nightmare, I meet
the single, unblinking eye
lighting the all-night sniffing and lifting
and sifting for bodies, pieces of bodies, anything that is not nothing,
in a search that always goes on
somewhere, now in New York and Kabul.

She stands on a corner holding up a picture
of her husband. He is smiling. In today’s
wind shift few pass. Sorry sorry sorry.
She startles. Suppose, down the street, that headlong lope...
or, over there, that hair so black it’s purple...
And yet, suppose some evening I forgot
The fare and transfer, yet got by that way
Without recall — lost yet poised in traffic.
Then I might find your eyes...
It could happen. Sorry sorry good luck thank you.
On this side it is “amnesia,” or forgetting the way home,
on the other, “invisibleness,” or never in body returning.
Hard to see clearly in the metallic mist,
or through the sheet of mock reality
cast over our world, bourne that no creature ever born
pokes its way back through, and no love can tear.

The towers burn and fall, burn and fall —
in a distant, shot, smokestacks spewing oily earth remnants out of the past.
Schwarze Milch der Fruhe wir trinken sie abends
Black milk of daybreak we drink it at nightfall
wir trinken sie mittags und morgens wir trinken sie nachts
we drink it at midday at morning we drink it at night
wir trinken und trinken
We drink it and drink it
This is not a comparison but a corollary,
not a likeness but a lineage
in the twentieth-century history of violent death —
black men in the South castrated and strung up from trees,
soldiers advancing through mud at ninety thousand dead per mile,
train upon train headed eastward made up of boxcars shoved full to the
corners with Jews and Gypsies to be enslaved or gassed,
state murder of twenty, thirty, forty million of its own,
atomic blasts wiping cities off the earth, firebombings the same,
death marches, starvations, assassinations, disappearances,
entire countries turned into rubble, minefields, mass graves.
Seeing the towers vomit these black omens, that the last century dumped into
this one, for us to dispose of, we know
they are our futures, that is our own black milk crossing the sky: wir shaufeln
ein Grab in den Luften da liegt man nicht eng we’re digging
a grave in the sky there’ll be plenty of room to lie down there

Burst jet fuel, incinerated aluminum, steel fume, crushed marble, exploded
granite, pulverized drywall, mashed concrete, berserked plastic,
gasified mercury, cracked chemicals, scoria, vapor
of the vaporized — wafted here
from the burnings of the past, draped over
our island up to streets regimented
into numbers and letters, breathed across
the great bridges to Brooklyn and the waiting sea:
astringent, miasmic, empyreumatic, slick,
freighted air too foul to take in but we take it in,
too gruesome for seekers of the amnesiac beloved
to breathe but they breathe it and you breathe it.

A photograph of a woman hangs from a string
at his neck. He doesn’t look up.
He stares down at the sidewalk of flagstone
slabs laid down in Whitman’s century, gutter edges
rasped by iron wheels to a melted roundedness:
a conscious intelligence envying the stones.
Nie staja sie, sa.
They do not become, they are.
Nie nad to, myslalem.
Nothing but that, I thought,
zbrzydziwszy sobie
now loathing within myself
wszystko co staje sie
everything that becomes.

And I sat down by the waters of the Hudson,
by the North Cove Yacht Harbor, and thought
how those on the high floors must have suffered: knowing
they would burn alive, and then, burning alive.
and I wondered, Is there a mechanism of death
that so mutilates existence no one
gets over it not even the dead?
Before me I saw, in steel letters welded
to the steel railing posts, Whitman’s words
written as America plunged into war with itself: City of the world!...
Proud and passionate city — mettlesome, mad, extravagant city!
words of a time of illusions. Then I remembered
what he wrote after the war was over and Lincoln dead:
I saw the debris and debris of all the dead soldiers of the war,
But I saw they were not as was thought.
They themselves were fully at rest — they suffer’d not,
The living remain’d and suffer’d, the mother suffer’d
And the wife and the child and the musing comrade suffer’d...

In our minds the glassy blocks
succumb over and over into themselves,
slam down floor by floor into themselves.

They blow up as if in reverse, exploding
downward and outward, billowing
through the streets, engulfing the fleeing.

As each tower goes down, it concentrates
into itself, transforms itself
infinitely slowly into a black hole

infinitesimally small: mass
without space, where each light,
each life, put out, lies down within us.
###

marcus

When you copied, the word "mean" did not come thru

Sages et folz, prestres et laiz
Wise and foolish, priests and laymen
Nobles, villains, larges et chiches
Noblemen, serfs, generous and m
Petiz et grans et beaulx et laiz

If there is time, maybe you can edit.

That is a powerfully evocative poem. Thanks!

The French sounds like Villon, or a contemporary of Villon with some of his spirit.

marcus

Yes! It is from Villon's "Great Testament" stanza 38-40 So 13th Century.

SI ne suis, bien le considere,
Filz d’ange, portant dyademe
D’estoille ne d’autre sidere.
Mon pere est mort, Dieu en ait l’ame;
Quant est du corps, il gist soubz lame …
J’entens que ma mere mourra,
—Et le scet bien, la povre femme—
Et le filz pas ne demourra.

Je congnois que povres et riches,
Sages et folz, prestres et laiz,
Nobles, villains, larges et chiches,
Petiz et grans, et beaulx et laiz,
Dames à rebrassez collez,
De quelconque condicion,
Portans atours et bourrelez,
Mort saisit sans exception.

Et meure Paris et Helaine,
Quiconques meurt, meurt à douleur
Telle qu’il pert vent et alaine;
Son fiel se creve sur son cuer,
Puis sue, Dieu scet quelle sueur!
Et n’est qui de ses maulx l’alege:
Car enfant n’a, frere ne seur,
Qui lors voulsist estre son plege.

==rough literal==
And I am not, I clearly see
the son of an angel, wearing a crown
of stars and other heavenly lights.
My dad is dead. God keep his soul.
As for his body, it lies under a stone slab.
I understand that my mom will die
(She knows it well, the poor woman!)
and her son will not linger much behind.

I know that poor and rich
wise and fool, priest and lay,
noble and base, generous and mean,
tall and short, handsome or not,
Ladies in turned-up collars
of whatever condition
wearing kerchiefs or caps,
Death seizes all without exception.

Paris and Helen both die.
Whoever dies, dies in pain.
Such that he loses wind and breath,
his(...?...) breaks onto his heart
Then he sweats. God knows what sweat!
And there is no one to ease his suffering (?)---
For no child nor brother nor sister
Has he who would be willing to take his place

ViewsofMars

Thanks Marcus. I originally went to The Library of Congress where I found the poem. It has more poetry regarding September 11, 2001.
http://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/911poetry/

I just now went to The New Yorker where Galway’s poem originally appeared on September 16, 2002.


When the Towers Fell
by Galway Kinnell September 16, 2002

From our high window we saw the towers

with their bands and blocks of light

brighten against a fading sunset,

saw them at any hour glitter and live

as if the spirits inside them sat up all night

calculating profit and loss, saw them reach up

to steep their tops in the until then invisible

yellow of sunrise, grew so used to them

often we didn’t see them, and now,

not seeing them, we see them.

The banker is talking to London.

Humberto is delivering breakfast sandwiches.

The trader is already working the phone.

The mail sorter has started sorting the mail.

. . . povres et riches

. . . poor and rich

Sages et folz, prestres et laiz

Wise and foolish, priests and laymen

Nobles, villains, larges et chiches

Noblemen, serfs, generous and mean

Petiz et grans et beaulx et laiz

Short and tall and handsome and homely

The plane screamed low down lower Fifth Avenue,

lifted at the Arch, someone said, shaking the dog walkers

in Washington Square Park, drove for the north tower,

struck with a heavy thud, releasing a huge bright gush

of blackened fire, and vanished, leaving a hole

the size and shape a cartoon plane might make

if it had passed harmlessly through and were flying away now,

on the far side, back into the realm of the imaginary.

Some with torn clothing, some bloodied,

some limping at top speed like children

in a three-legged race, some half dragged,

some intact in neat suits and dresses,

they straggle out of step up the avenues,

each dusted to a ghostly whiteness,

their eyes rubbed red as the eyes of a Zahoris,

who can see the dead under the ground.

Some died while calling home to say they were O.K.

Some died after over an hour spent learning they would die.

Some died so abruptly they may have seen death from within it.

Some broke windows and leaned out and waited for rescue.

Some were asphyxiated.

Some burned, their very faces caught fire.

Some fell, letting gravity speed them through their long moment.

Some leapt hand in hand, the elasticity in last bits of love-time letting—I wish

I could say—their vertical streaks down the sky happen more lightly.

At the high window, where I’ve often stood

to escape a nightmare, I meet

the single, unblinking eye

lighting the all-night sniffing and lifting

and sifting for bodies, pieces of bodies, anything that is not nothing,

in a search that always goes on

somewhere, now in New York and Kabul.

She stands on a corner holding up a picture

of her husband. He is smiling. In today’s

wind shift few pass. Sorry sorry sorry.

She startles. Suppose, down the street, that headlong lope . . .

or, over there, that hair so black it’s purple . . .

And yet, suppose some evening I forgot

The fare and transfer, yet got by that way

Without recall,—lost yet poised in traffic.

Then I might find your eyes . . .

It could happen. Sorry sorry good luck thank you.

On this side it is “amnesia,” or forgetting the way home;

on the other, “invisibleness,” or never in body returning.

Hard to see clearly in the metallic mist,

or through the sheet of mock reality

cast over our world, bourne that no creature ever born

pokes its way back through, and no love can tear.

The towers burn and fall, burn and fall—

in a distant shot, smokestacks spewing oily earth remnants out of the past.

Schwarze Milch der Frühe wir trinken sie abends

Black milk of daybreak we drink it at nightfall

wir trinken sie mittags und morgens wir trinken sie nachts

we drink it at midday at morning we drink it at night

wir trinken und trinken

we drink it and drink it

This is not a comparison but a corollary,

not a likeness but a lineage

in the twentieth-century history of violent death—

black men in the South castrated and strung up from trees,

soldiers advancing through mud at ninety thousand dead per mile,

train upon train headed eastward made up of boxcars shoved full to the

corners with Jews and Gypsies to be enslaved or gassed,

state murder of twenty, thirty, forty million of its own,

atomic blasts wiping cities off the earth, firebombings the same,

death marches, starvations, assassinations, disappearances,

entire countries turned into rubble, minefields, mass graves.

Seeing the towers vomit these black omens, that the last century dumped into

this one, for us to dispose of, we know

they are our futures, that is our own black milk crossing the sky: wir schaufeln

ein Grab in den Lüften da liegt man nicht eng we’re digging

a grave in the sky there’ll be plenty of room to lie down there

Burst jet fuel, incinerated aluminum, steel fume, crushed marble, exploded

granite, pulverized drywall, mashed concrete, berserked plastic,

gasified mercury, cracked chemicals, scoria, vapor

of the vaporized—wafted here

from the burnings of the past, draped over

our island up to streets regimented

into numbers and letters, breathed across

the great bridges to Brooklyn and the waiting sea:

astringent, miasmic, empyreumatic, slick,

freighted air too foul to take in but we take it in,

too gruesome for seekers of the amnesiac beloved

to breathe but they breathe it and you breathe it.

A photograph of a woman hangs from a string

at his neck. He doesn’t look up.

He stares down at the sidewalk of flagstone

slabs laid down in Whitman’s century, gutter edges

rasped by iron wheels to a melted roundedness:

a conscious intelligence envying the stones.

Nie stają się, są.

They do not become, they are.

Nic nad to, myślałem,

Nothing but that, I thought,

zbrzydziwszy sobie

now loathing within myself

wszystko co staje się

everything that becomes.

And I sat down by the waters of the Hudson,

by the North Cove Yacht Harbor, and thought

how those on the high floors must have suffered: knowing

they would burn alive, and then, burning alive.

And I wondered, Is there a mechanism of death

that so mutilates existence no one

gets over it not even the dead?

Before me I saw, in steel letters welded

to the steel railing posts, Whitman’s words

written as America plunged into war with itself: City of the world! . . .

Proud and passionate city—mettlesome, mad, extravagant city!

—words of a time of illusions. Then I remembered

what he wrote after the war was over and Lincoln dead:

I saw the debris and debris of all the dead soldiers of the war,

But I saw they were not as was thought.

They themselves were fully at rest—they suffer’d not,

The living remain’d and suffer’d, the mother suffer’d,

And the wife and the child and the musing comrade suffer’d . . .

In our minds the glassy blocks

succumb over and over into themselves,

slam down floor by floor into themselves.

They blow up as if in reverse, exploding

downward and outward, billowing

through the streets, engulfing the fleeing.

As each tower goes down, it concentrates

into itself, transforms itself

infinitely slowly into a black hole

infinitesimally small: mass

without space, where each light,

each life, put out, lies down within us.

Quotations: “The Testament,” by François Villon; “For the Marriage of Faustus and Helen,” by Hart Crane; “Death Fugue,” by Paul Celan; “Songs of a Wanderer,” by Aleksander Wat; “City of Ships” and “When Lilacs Last in the Door-yard Bloom’d,” by Walt Whitman.
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/200...o_poem_kinnell
###

I will never forget September 11, 2001.

Dotini

Rumbles without sound
Auroras rain down
Magnetic fields shake
Beware the spacequake

Vortices swirl
plasma a'twirl
Richter predicts
a magnitude six

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news...l_spacequakes/

gendou2

Tree of Knowledge

Ignorance is a dank prison of crumbled rock, birthplace to us all, grave of too many.
Flakes of disused epidermis twinkle in transit through a single, narrow shaft of sunlight.
Trace this light ray to its source and discover a crack in the cage of mind!
Lithe taproots slither through the crack to plumb the ceiling, walls, and floor.
Turgid invading tentacles obscure the sunlight, returning fearful darkness.
Feet slowly encircled by woody serpents, legs arrested, torso constricted, etc.
Body digested, molecules absorbed into the roots, sucked up into the trunk by capillary action.
Body reassembled, births from a grotesque hollow, spilling forth onto a bed of soft grass.
Look around at the infinite meadow of wisdom, where knowledge basks in the light of freedom.

Once removed by the tree of knowledge, there is no return to the prison of ignorance.

gendou2

http://www.universetoday.com/wp-cont.../01/hanny2.jpg

Voorwerpers

Finally, you notice us. How special. How clever.
You, privileged ones, enveloped in loving arms.
Cushioned by rotation, safely locked in your milky home.
Have you mistaken our fleet of suns for a galactic fluke?
One's sacred voyage is another's baroque oddity.

We were contented voyeurs like you, once.
Toes wriggling in wet sandy shore.
Gaze on the horizon, over the dark ocean between secluded worlds.
Yearning to sail free, in search of a new stellar archipelago.

Long ago we set sail, between islands, then planets, then stars.
Now, we undertake this ultimate journey,
A million solar winds at our backs,
Into the intergalactic void.

20Tauri

This is a wonderful idea for a thread! I studied creative writing and math as an undergrad, and I am always excited to see interdisciplinary poetry. Galway Kinnell is one of my favorites. Here is a poem by Albert Goldbarth:

The Sciences Sing a Lullaby

Physics says: go to sleep. Of course
you're tired. Every atom in you
has been dancing the shimmy in silver shoes
nonstop from mitosis to now.
Quit tapping your feet. They'll dance
inside themselves without you. Go to sleep.

Geology says: it will be all right. Slow inch
by inch America is giving itself
to the ocean. Go to sleep. Let darkness
lap at your sides. Give darkness an inch.
You aren't alone. All of the continents used to be
one body. You aren't alone. Go to sleep.

Astronomy says: the sun will rise tomorrow,
Zoology says: on rainbow-fish and lithe gazelle,
Psychology says: but first it has to be night, so
Biology says: the body-clocks are stopped all over town
and
History says: here are the blankets, layer on layer, down and down.