Science poetry-or verse that is just informative about nature

[marcus]

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

In another thread, Mormonator mentioned poetry about particle physics. This reminds me of John Updike's Neutrino poem and Franck Wilczek's Virtual Particles sonnet.
And Borges sonnet about 4D spacetime. Maybe we should try collecting some samples of poetry about science and about the deeper vision of nature which it provides.

the two are different. science is a human activity, a tradition, a community with customs and standards etc. one could have verse about scientists and about that activity.

but the vision that science helps us get is something else. it's different from the activity of science and more emotional. Feynman talked about enjoying a sunset and at the same time understanding what underlies the colors. or enjoying both the blue sky along with understanding why the sky is blue--how the air can preferentially scatter blue light more than red. being at the beach watching the waves and also thinking the molecules of water. that isn't so much science as an extension of a love of nature. or the knowledge of cosmology that deepens appreciation of the night sky.

so where are the poems about this? they are rare, I guess. there is not very much science verse of any kind, and what there is is mostly LIGHT verse----witty humor. So let's collect whatever we can find and not be picky! Light verse is fine---it teaches something too. Here's an example by Frank Wilczek:VIRTUAL PARTICLES, by Frank Wilczek

Beware of thinking nothing's there.
Remove all you can, despite your care
Behind remains a restless seething
Of mindless clones beyond conceiving.

They come in a wink, they dance about,
Whatever they touch is seized by doubt:
What am I doing here? What should I weigh?
Such thoughts often lead to rapid decay.

Fear not! The terminology's misleading;
Decay is virtual particle breeding
Their ferment, though mindless, does serve noble ends:
Those clones, when exchanged, make a bond between friends.

To be or not? The choice seems clear enough,
But Hamlet vacillated. So does this stuff.

This sonnet is recited by Wilczek in the online video lecture The Universe is a Strange Place
to find it go here:
http://web.mit.edu/physics/facultyandstaff/faculty/frank_wilczek.html
and scroll down to "View the Lectures" where there is a list of his video lectures
and also you can find it in his book Fantastic Realities:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/9812566554/?tag=pfamazon01-20here's another rhymed verse thread
https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=244079
it has some other samples of science-related poetry

 

[marcus]

the best humorous physics poem I know is Cosmic Gall by John Updike, about neutrinos
this is typed from memory and so you need to consult his Collected Poems at the library
to be sure of every word and punctuation mark. but this is the gist:

Neutrinos are of size quite small,
No charge, and hardly any mass.
They scarcely interact at all:
The Earth is just a silly ball
To them, through which they simply pass,
Like dustmaids down a drafty hall
Or photons through a sheet of glass.
They snub the most exquisite gas,
Ignore the most substantial wall,
Cold-shoulder steel and sounding brass,
Insult the stallion in his stall,
And scorning barriers of class,
Infiltrate you and me! Like tall
And painless guillotines, they fall
Down through our heads into the grass.
At night, they enter at Nepal
And pierce the lover and his lass
From underneath the bed--you call
It wonderful; I call it crass.

for more goodies, here's his collected poems
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0679762043/?tag=pfamazon01-20
Updike is remarkable. If I felt qualified to judge I'd call him the most accomplished stylist in America
based on his short stories and novels, a kind of New Yorker paragon. We are lucky to have
a physics poem from him---actually he has several but this will do for a sample.

 

[marcus]

Frank Wilczek has this quatrain about gluons

GLUON RAP by Franck Wilczek

O! O! O! You eight colorful guys!
You won't let quarks materialize.
You're tricky, but now we realize
You hold together our nucleis.

To find other poems by Wilczek, and to make sure the punctuation is right here, look in his 49 essays book
called Fantastic Realities
https://www.amazon.com/dp/9812566554/?tag=pfamazon01-20

I guess nucleis is the superplural of nucleus.
Several would be nuclei, the ordinary plural form,
but a whole lot more would be nucleis.
or even nucleizes.

 

[wolram]

I love the second one.

 

[marcus]

I love the second one.

Yeah, the one by Updike. He is a master writer and a very smart guy to boot. I'd say you have good taste in poetry .

I'm hoping a few other people will find physics poems to add on here.

 

[mormonator_rm]

Here is a short haiku I have written that I will share. I was frustrated at the time by my inability to nail down a good mass for the sigma meson in a meson-tetraquark-glueball mixing scheme, and also by the overabundance of spurion and a wide range of experimental data that did not agree well on it either. I don't know if it is very good, but my feelings of frustration were vented this way. So, here it is, titled "Light sigma Meson"

"Light sigma Meson"

In the cold snowscape,
The white rabbit hides secure.
How you elude me!

 

[marcus]

This is a prize (surprise) haiku.
I am not a regular fan of that form--I prefer western rhymed metrical lyric, as a rule.
But was delighted with this one, because it has the surprise change from serene stillness
to an impatient outburst
I think a classic virtue of the haiku form is sudden change, an epigrammatic ambush.

In yours, a tranquil image is presented as something restful and calming to contemplate
and then inverted: previously admired blankness is now cause for aggravation.

 

[mormonator_rm]

This is a prize (surprise) haiku.
I am not a regular fan of that form--I prefer western rhymed metrical lyric, as a rule.
But was delighted with this one, because it has the surprise change from serene stillness
to an impatient outburst
I think a classic virtue of the haiku form is sudden change, an epigrammatic ambush.

In yours, a tranquil image is presented as something restful and calming to contemplate
and then inverted: previously admired blankness is now cause for aggravation.

I am glad you liked it, marcus. I would also add that my selection of a winter theme was not by chance. Since cold, nonpertrubative QCD is involved, and the process is low energy, I picked a winter theme. The haiku does require a season to be selected, traditionally.

 

[marcus]

I am glad you liked it, marcus. I would also add that my selection of a winter theme was not by chance. Since cold, nonpertrubative QCD is involved, and the process is low energy, I picked a winter theme. The haiku does require a season to be selected, traditionally.

It's interesting how you think multilevel like a poet as well as a particle physicist. If you have some other samples of physics poetry that you think would make a fitting companion to that haiku, please post. It would be nice to see some other work. I like your haiku so I'm going to copy it here to keep it in immediate sight.

"Light sigma Meson"

In the cold snowscape,
The white rabbit hides secure.
How you elude me!

 

[mormonator_rm]

It's interesting how you think multilevel like a poet as well as a particle physicist. If you have some other samples of physics poetry that you think would make a fitting companion to that haiku, please post. It would be nice to see some other work. I like your haiku so I'm going to copy it here to keep it in immediate sight.

Thanks... I try. I do have one other that I find worthy of posting, but it is not any traditional form. It is completely modernistic free verse, technically speaking... I was mostly thinking of the new linear accelerator that will be coming, but also a tribute to linear accelerators in general, so I called it "LINAC" as a general reference to linear accelerators. It is by no means technically accurate (I made this years ago and hadn't been to an accelerator facility yet), but gives a general feeling which is, I think, more important.

"LINAC"

Deep underground lays a massive tunnel
A tube of giant proportion lined with magnets
Dynamos whir
Static builds
Scientists line up in the control room
To watch the injector readout
Suddenly the positrons accelerate down the track
Hurtling toward their impending doom
While opposite them, the electrons speed onward
To meet them half-way.
The beams collide
As positrons and electrons meet,
Showering the detectors with photons
Like a gentle spring mist
Somewhere within a new breed of particle
Lurks, hidden and obscured
Seen only as the presence of charged pions
Nothing but silence and darkness in the tunnel
No color except black and no sound
Except for the whirring dynamos.
In the control room
A claxon chimes
Everyone looks at the monitor
All falls still and calm except for
Little green lines on the display
Little green lines to show where things went
Like a mess of thin spaghetti all over the screen
They all congratulate each other on a fine run
And then go home for the night
Tomorrow they will learn what happened
In that silent dark tunnel

 

[marcus]

A possible source of science-related rhymed metric verse:
http://www.poemhunter.com/james-clerk-maxwell/poems/page-1/
James Clerk Maxwell one of the greatest scientists of the 19th C, maybe all time, was also an amateur versifier.

He has a poem in honor of Arthur Cayley. They were collecting contributions to commission a portrait painter, Dickenson, to do a painting of Cayley for the university collection, so Maxwell wrote:


To the Committee of the Cayley Portrait Fund

O wretched race of men, to space confined!
What honour can ye pay to him, whose mind
To that which lies beyond hath penetrated?
The symbols he hath formed shall sound his praise,
And lead him on through unimagined ways
To conquests new, in worlds not yet created.

...

March on, symbolic host! with step sublime,
Up to the flaming bounds of Space and Time!
There pause, until by Dickenson depicted,
In two dimensions, we the form may trace
Of him whose soul, too large for vulgar space,
In n dimensions flourished unrestricted.

James Clerk Maxwell

 

[ViewsofMars]

Marcus, I just love poetry. It's always a pleasure meeting a man that likes poetry as much as you do. Thank you. I hope you won't mind me placing a poem here about *human nature*.

I have a fondness for Galway Kinnell since I’m a woman. I’ve had the pleasure of meeting him. This is my favorite poem. Ahhhhh, so loverly.:!)

Galway Kinnell, Poetry, “Feathering,” The New Yorker, January 24, 2000, p. 54

FEATHERING

Many heads before mine have waked
in the dark on that old pillow
and lain there, awake, wondering
at the strangeness within themselves
they had been part of, a moment ago.

She has ripped out the stitches
at one end and stands on the stone table
in the garden holding the pillow like a sack
and plunges her fingers in and extracts
a thick handful of breast feathers.

A few of them snow toward the ground,
and immediately tree swallows appear.
She raises the arm holding the down
straight up in the air, and stands there, like a mom

at a school crossing, or a god
of seedtime about to release
a stream of bits of plenitude,
or herself, long ago at a pond, chumming
for sunfish with bread crumbs.

At the lift of a breeze, her fist
loosens and parcels out a slow
upward tumble of dozens of puffs
near zero on the scale of materiality.
More swallows loop and dive about her.

Now, with a flap, one picks up speed
and streaks in at a feather, misses, stops,
twists and streaks back and this time
snaps its beak shut on it, and soars,
and banks back to where its nest box is.

A few more flurries, and she ties off
the pillow, ending for today
the game they make of it when she’s there,
the imperative to feather one’s nest
come down from the Pliocene.

At the window, where I’ve been watching
through bird glasses, I can see
a graceful awkwardness in her walk,
as if she’s tipsy, or not sure
where she’s been, and yet is deeply happy.

Sometimes when we’re out at dinner and a dim mood
from the day persists in me, she flies up and
disappears a moment, plucking out of the air
somewhere this or that amusement or comfort
and, back again, lays it in our dinner talk.

Once, when it was time to leave, she stood up
and, scanning about the restaurant for the restroom,
went up as if on tiptoe, like the upland plover.
In the taxi we kissed a mint from the desk
from my mouth to hers, like cedar waxwings.

Later, when I padded up to bed,
I found her dropped off, the bedside lamp
still on, an open book face down over her heart;
and though my plod felt quiet
as a cat’s footfalls, her eyes at once opened.

And when I climbed into our bed and crept
toward the side of it lined with the down comforter
and the warmth and softness of herself,
she took me in her arms and sang to me
in high, soft, clear, wild notes.

 

[fuzzyfelt]

Good to see James Clerk Maxwell's poetry here, too.

 

[poeteye]

ENTROPIC HOPE

Dr. Smart, with sweeping dioramics,
summarized theory accepted today:
“The first few laws of thermodynamics:
You can’t win, break even or get away.

“No matter speed of acceleration,
the universe runs down since the Big Bang.
The fate of order is dissipation.
The spring, once sprung, can’t be re-sprung. It sprang.

“A system needs energy to survive
or it’s unable to do work, of course.
On galactic scales or like us, alive,
complexity is the result of force.

“And though the second law says we can’t win,
it’s only ‘law’ to a statistician.”

 

[poeteye]

RARIFIED

The physicist had reached the end
of equations he’d worked for years.
Excited, he called an old friend,
to invite him out for some beers.
When asked about the occasion,
he smugly announced he’d worked-out
the quark confinement equation,
beyond any shadow of doubt.
For strings of ev’ry dimension
his elegant math had held true;
no one could argue dissension!
When there was no response, he knew,
informed by silence on the phone,
how far he’d come to be alone

 

[poeteye]

STRINGS ATTACHED

Physicists foresee a utopia
(once they squint through micro-myopia)
where all of the forces of nature should
become unified and be understood.
Even in science, letting go is hard,
and notions are the hardest to divorce,
but, to reach there, they’ll have to discard
their classical point-particles of force.

While Newton works large-scale, his physics fail,
and even Einstein’s theories can’t subsist,
when applied to the sub-atomic scale.
The answers they produce just can’t exist.

Particle physics, in quantum foam, sank,
when its researchers walked the length of Planck.

 

[poeteye]

VISIONARY

He looked into the lens-system and saw
an unimaginably small world grow.
Now does this image in history draw
from van Leeuwenhoek or Galileo?
Through lenses both passed to another realm
of being, since their broadened reference frame
allowed them visions that could overwhelm.
Then for everyone nothing stayed the same.
The vaster one’s view the clearer things get,
of cosmic, subatomic, even time,
and, while the masses may first be upset,
brought to some summit that they didn’t climb,
it’s crucial so all the ingenious might
be informed of the remarkable sight.

 

[poeteye]

SURVIVAL OF THE WITLESS

When fire, water, Earth and air were thought
to be the elementals that composed
all matter, folks did not become distraught
at what avant-garde chemists then proposed.

Most understand that the Earth is a sphere
(with only one natural satellite);
no matter where folks sail they do not fear
they’ll reach the edge and fall into the night.

Most even have embraced that time’s not fixed
and have adopted relativity.
So why should folks’ beliefs remain so mixed
about evolution’s activity?

Abundant evidence supports this view,
yet institutions argue it’s not true.

 

[poeteye]

ILLUMINATED

The physicists in their studies transcribe
formulae that define reality.
Theirs is a cloistered yet secular tribe
that daily deals with strict duality.
Foremost, their math must be made to agree,
precisely, with all that can be observed,
though, often, what we are able to see
can misinform; they must not be unnerved.
To gain acceptance, they are overseen
by peers and the harshly economic,
while pressured to find covenant between
the classical and the subatomic,
and, though they cannot see their superstring,
keep faith that it will answer everything.

 

[marcus]

I liked some of these, poeteye. Thanks for posting them!

 

[ninar]

Hi, I love poetry... all these poems are great! At the time I gained my interest in physics, I attended a particular lecture... and the lecturer brought up the last verses of a beautiful sonet by Francisco de Quevedo, titled "Amor Constante Más Allá De La Muerte" ("Love Constant Beyond Death"):

Alma a quien todo un dios prisión ha sido,
Venas que humor a tanto fuego han dado,
Medulas que han gloriosamente ardido:

Su cuerpo dejará, no su cuidado;
Serán ceniza, mas tendrá sentido;
Polvo serán, mas polvo enamorado.


translated:

My soul, whom a god made his prison of,
my veins, which a liquid humour fed to fire,
my marrows, which have gloriously flamed,

will leave their body, never their desire;
they will be ash but ash in feeling framed;
they will be dust but will be dust in love.

The whole piece can be resumed in the last three lines; particularly, to the last asseveration; AND even more to the last words: dust in love.

edit: i forgot to add, my point is, it made me think about the stars: star dust, the universe... the particles we are made of. They may or may not have anything intrinsically... sentient to it. But, perhaps in life, love, poetry... it is indeed, dust in love.

Later, at another lecture an anthropologist made a remark about life, science: The enigma can be solved, not the mystery.

Yeah, I love this, makes me feel good about life.

 

[marcus]

Hi, I love poetry... all these poems are great! At the time I gained my interest in physics, I attended a particular lecture... and the lecturer brought up the last verses of a beautiful sonet by Francisco de Quevedo, titled "Amor Constante Más Allá De La Muerte" ("Love Constant Beyond Death"):

Alma a quien todo un dios prisión ha sido,
Venas que humor a tanto fuego han dado,
Medulas que han gloriosamente ardido:

Su cuerpo dejará, no su cuidado;
Serán ceniza, mas tendrá sentido;
Polvo serán, mas polvo enamorado.


translated:

My soul, whom a god made his prison of,
my veins, which a liquid humour fed to fire,
my marrows, which have gloriously flamed,

will leave their body, never their desire;
they will be ash but ash in feeling framed;
they will be dust but will be dust in love.

...

I think that is a very good rhymed verse translation. Does it happen to be your own? This is not especially important, but I think I might appreciate seeing more of the work of that translator. Good verse translation is uncommon. It must be both true and natural.

For comparison here is an alternative which I found at many many websites. It would seem to be the most common English version:

Soul by no less than a god confined,
veins that such a blazing fire have fueled,
marrow to its glorious flames consigned:

the body will abandon, not its woes;
will soon be ash, but ash that is aware;
dust will be, but dust whose love still grows.​

Your last line ("dust in love") is, I think, stronger and more natural (than the other about "love still grows"). I would be more apt to say it than the other and happier to hear it spoken.

There is a trivial problem---I suspect that your translation misses a TRIPLE PARALLELISM that Quevedo expected his listener to hear.
Like "Tom, Dick, and Harry are selfish, fat, and silly [respectively]."

To illustrate by temporarily messing with your trans, :

My soul...,
my veins...,
my marrow,
+
will leave its body, never its desire;
will be ash but ash in feeling framed;
will be dust but will be dust in love.
____________________________________

My soul will leave its body, never its desire;
my veins will be ash but ash in feeling framed;
my marrow will be dust but will be dust in love.Do you think soul, veins, marrow all collectively do the same thing and end up the same way? Or is there a parallel structure with the soul doing its thing and the veins and marrow doing something else which is appropriate to them?

Actually I'm more curious to know if you made the translation. Marrow is self-plural in English, like deer and fish. Or more exactly, blood. One has in one's body a supply of blood, one does not have bloods.

 

[marcus]

Mariana,
I'm not a spanish speaker, check me on this. I want to make an accurate literal of the Quevedo sestet.

Alma a quien todo un dios prisión ha sido,
Venas que humor a tanto fuego han dado,
Medulas que han gloriosamente ardido:

Su cuerpo dejará, no su cuidado;
Serán ceniza, mas tendrá sentido;
Polvo serán, mas polvo enamorado.

My soul, to which the whole god Amor has been a prison (my soul imprisoned in all Love itself);
My veins which gave [a refined distillate] fuel to so much fire;
My marrow which has gloriously burned:

Will leave its body, [but] not its care/concern/preoccupation [= its obsession];
Will be ash, but [the ash] will retain feeling;
Will be dust, but dust [entirely head-over-heels] in love.

I think of "humor" as a kind of clear-burning fuel like alcohol, or highly purified gasoline. People have these essences in them which determine their passions and to some extent their behavior. Quevedo I think lived around Shakespeare time, maybe 1600? I'm trying to think what "humor" meant to him. A fluid substance that helps to explain a person's character, impulses, psychology.

 

[atyy]

Actually I'm more curious to know if you made the translation. Marrow is self-plural in English, like deer and fish. Or more exactly, blood. One has in one's body a supply of blood, one does not have bloods.

I liked the sound of "marrows" better, so I looked in the OED to vindicate my wrong taste!

"1659 MILTON Considerations touching Hirelings 137 To how little purpose are all those piles of sermons,..bodies and marrows of divinity, besides all other sciences, in our English tongue."

 

[ninar]

Maria,
I'm not a spanish speaker, check me on this. I want to make an accurate literal of the Quevedo sestet.

Alma a quien todo un dios prisión ha sido,
Venas que humor a tanto fuego han dado,
Medulas que han gloriosamente ardido:

Su cuerpo dejará, no su cuidado;
Serán ceniza, mas tendrá sentido;
Polvo serán, mas polvo enamorado.

My soul, to which the whole god Amor has been a prison (my soul imprisoned in all Love itself);
My veins which gave [a refined distillate "high octane"] fuel to so much fire;
My marrow which has gloriously burned:

Will leave its body, [but] not its care/concern/preoccupation [= its obsession];
Will be ash, but [the ash] will retain feeling;
Will be dust, but dust [entirely head-over-heels] in love.

I think of "humor" as a kind of clear-burning fuel like alcohol, or highly purified gasoline. People have these essences in them which determine their passions and to some extent their behavior. Quevedo I think lived around Shakespeare time, maybe 1600? I'm trying to think what "humor" meant to him. A fluid substance that helps to explain a person's character, impulses, psychology.

Yes! Exactly! To my taste, that's a better translation. The words used in spanish are so carefully placed: lyrically, for its syllabus, the cadence, and most important, to powerfully accentuate certain elements.

The translated first part:

Cerrar podrá mis ojos la postrera
sombra que me llevare el blanco día,
y podrá desatar esta alma mía
hora a su afán ansioso lisonjera;

mas no, de esotra parte, en la ribera,
dejará la memoria, en donde ardía:
nadar sabe mi llama la agua fría,
y perder el respeto a ley severa.

would go (as literal as possible):

Shut may my eyes be by the latter <-- many feel the urge to place a comma here
Shadow that will bring me the white day,
And thus untie this soul of mine
An hour, from its [death’s] anxious flattery;

But not, from that place, in the riverside,
Will leave the memory, in which it burnt:
To swim knows my flame the cold water,
And to lose respect to law’s severity.

As you correctly pointed, Quevedo draws a lot of symmetries:

The first quartet recognizes the faith which we will face: death.

In the second quartet he warns: the "severe law" is not death, but forgetting, that is, to leave its memory in the terrenal world and not be able to take it to that other place.

Then, he sentences(as in judge would):

Alma... su cuerpo dejará, no su cuidado

Its my personal opinion there's a good duality played for genders; it can refer to "su"(its) [the deceased's] body. And the second "its" [care] "caring towards the lover".

Part of the complexity of the poem is on the purity of the concepts...

fire: the flame/flama, to burn/arder, fire/fuego, ash/ceniza, water/agua.
death: “the latter”/postrera, shadow/sombra, white day/día blanco, ash/ceniza, dust/polvo.

Also, a recurring tool is the (i don't know if the term is correct) anastrophe, to alter the regular order of the words. Sort of how Yoda speaks.

Do you think soul, veins, marrow all collectively do the same thing and end up the same way? Or is there a parallel structure with the soul doing its thing and the veins and marrow doing something else which is appropriate to them?

I do believe they have their proper way of "becoming dust", the soul leaves the body, leaving it to dust; veins fed to a flame; the marrow gloriously burnt.

As to the humor, it puzzles me, I, too, see it like a clear-fuel that feeds the fire. I think both in english and spanish it refers both to "mood" or "character" that kind of semantics. Also, in ancient times it referred to the vital liquids in a human organism, so, maybe from this definition it derives.

 

[ninar]

I liked the sound of "marrows" better, so I looked in the OED to vindicate my wrong taste!

"1659 MILTON Considerations touching Hirelings 137 To how little purpose are all those piles of sermons,..bodies and marrows of divinity, besides all other sciences, in our English tongue."

Marrows sounds good to me too... I translated it myself, but I was trying to reproduce a very good sounding translation I read in a book written in english, when I was a kid.

Marcus, you did a very good interpretation, you study them as a profession?

 

[marcus]

Marrows sounds good to me too... I translated it myself, but I was trying to reproduce a very good sounding translation I read in a book written in english, when I was a kid.

Marcus, you did a very good interpretation, you study them as a profession?

Thank you! Poetry translation is a challenging and valuable calling because it helps to keep poetry alive. But I am sorry to say I do not have that as a profession.

Now you and Atyy (a very perceptive person) have almost persuaded me that marrows sounds good.

I am glad to know that you did this translation. You got some things very right. I would like to see more by you, where you actually make it a verse translation. By verse I mean sometimes involving rhyme, rhythm, and other acoustic stuff, not in a rigid way necessarily but being conscious of them. You did that with the sestet. That's what I mean by verse translation.

After a brief search on the web, I find that the prevailing translation is by a literature professor named Alix Ingber. Here is the whole sonnet:
http://sonnets.spanish.sbc.edu/Quevedo_Amor.html
Since you have your own, you may not want to look at Ingber. But just in case, here it is.

One more sample of Ingber's work:
http://sonnets.spanish.sbc.edu/BArgensola_makeup.html
A sonnet about a woman who wears a lot of makeup and whom he finds quite beautiful (because/despite the artifice).
Nicely translated 16th century light verse.

 

[marcus]

Mariana, I have one Spanish sonnet I absolutely love---both the Borges original and the Richard Wilbur English. If you could find me another Spanish sonnet as wonderful as this I might try to translate it, or we could collaborate on a translation. I'll try to recite the english from memory.

One thing does not exist, Oblivion.
God saves the metal and he saves the dross,
and his prophetic memory guards from loss
the moons to come, and those of evenings gone.

Everything is: the shadows in the glass
which in between the day's two twilights, you
have scattered by the thousands, or shall strew
henceforward in the mirror as you pass;

and everything is part of that diverse
crystalline memory, the Universe.
Whoever though its endless mazes wanders

hears door on door click shut behind his stride,
and only on the sunset's farther side
shall view at last the Archetypes and Splendors.

===============

I like it so much partly because it realizes for me the 4D block universe of General Relativity.
Existence being a crystal memory of all time and space, our particles the worldlines running through it. That sonnet never goes away, for me. I have, I am a little embarrassed to say, remembered it several times already in this or in other PF threads.

 

[ninar]

By the way, you have probably seen this already, I think this kinda counts as science poetry...

'A Glorious Dawn' Carl Sagan ft. Stephen Hawking

 

[marcus]

By the way, you have probably seen this already, I think this kinda counts as science poetry...

'A Glorious Dawn' Carl Sagan ft. Stephen Hawking

There is a YouTube of that, that I saw. It begins with Carl Sagan on some cliffs by the ocean.
The wind catches at his hair a little. He apologizes for not being a very good singer. He makes some little whoops and wave-rush noise. then he begins. The voices of Sagan and Hawking are heavily altered electronically, in places. Let us get the link to that YouTube. It is real poetry, I think.

 

[ninar]

Oops, I forgot to link it:

 

[marcus]

Oops, I forgot to link it:

I will try yours. I found this one but I don't like it as much as the one I remember
http://www.physorg.com/news177269555.html

Yes! I tried your link. It is the one I remembered. Thrilling.

 

[ninar]

I like it so much partly because it realizes for me the 4D block universe of General Relativity.
Existence being a crystal memory of all time and space, our particles the worldlines running through it. That sonnet never goes away, for me. I have, I am a little embarrassed to say, remembered it several times already in this or in other PF threads.

Its amazing how well it will place the concept of existence and everness within time and space. Its incredible how some poems will stay for us forever, and we will actually recite from heart.

This poem made me remember a verse from "Poem XX" of Neruda:

"es tan corto el amor... y es tan largo el olvido."
"love is so short... forgetting is so long."

So, so true

btw you can call me mariana :shy:

 

[marcus]

...
btw you can call me mariana :shy:

Thanks. I went back and edited my posts from yesterday to get the name right.

 

[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.

Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) was a Bengali poet, philosopher, artist, playwright, composer and novelist. India's first Nobel laureate, Tagore won the 1913 Nobel Prize for Literature. He composed the text of both India's and Bangladesh's respective national anthems. Tagore traveled widely and was friends with many notable 20th century figures such as William Butler Yeats, H.G. Wells, Ezra Pound, and Albert Einstein. While he supported Indian Independence, he often had tactical disagreements with Gandhi (at one point talking him out of a fast to the death). His body of literature is deeply sympathetic for the poor and upholds universal humanistic values. His poetry drew from traditional Vaisnava folk lyrics and was often deeply mystical.
http://www.sacred-texts.com/hin/tagore/

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]

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.

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/v457/n7231/full/457794a.html
2. http://www.ruthpadel.com/pages/mother_of_pearl.htm[/URL]

 

[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=...&resnum=2&ved=0CDUQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q&f=false

 

[marcus]

MATH LOVE SONG ON YOUTUBE


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]

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.

 

[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/home/2009/06/queneau.html

http://poetrywithmathematics.blogspot.com/2010/03/queneau-and-oulipo.html

http://uprightdown.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/roubaudwasthetime3.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