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Cosmological Tanka

Posted in Poetry, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , on January 14, 2014 by telescoper

Most readers of this blog will be familiar with the form of Japanese poetry known as Haiku. I’ve even had a go at producing some cosmological Haiku myself. I suspect rather fewer will have come across another form known as Tanka. Being 31 syllables long rather than the 17 of Haiku, these are not quite as short but still quite a challenge to write.  They comprise 5 lines with a 5-7-5-7-7 pattern of syllables. I’m told by Japanese friends that Tanka are specifically written to celebrate a special event or to capture the mood of a particular moment. Here is an exquisite example by a famous poet called Otomo No Yakamochi:

From outside my house,
only the faint distant sound
of gentle breezes
wandering through bamboo leaves
in the long evening silence.

I’ve had a go at composing a couple of Tanka to do with specific moments in cosmology. Here’s one about the epoch of recombination:

An electron finds
a proton and marries it;
they make hydrogen.
Simultaneous weddings
free light across the cosmos.

I was talking to some students about the spherical collapse model so here’s a Tanka for that:

I was more dense than
my surroundings, expanded
more slowly, then stopped.
Now I must start to collapse;
soon I shall virialize.

Further attempts welcome through the comments box!

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Japanese Jokes

Posted in Poetry with tags , on January 8, 2014 by telescoper

In his winged collar
he flew. The nation wanted
peace. Our Perseus!

William Blake, William
Blake, William Blake, William Blake,
say it and feel new!

Love without sex is
still the most efficient form
of hell known to man.

A professional
is one who believes he has
invented breathing.

The Creation had
to find room for the exper-
imental novel.

When daffodils be-
gin to peer: watch out, para-
noia’s round the bend.

I get out of bed
and say goodbye to people
I won’t meet again.

I sit and worry
about money who very
soon will have to die.

I consider it
my duty to be old hat
so you can hate me.

I am getting fat
and unattractive but so
much nicer to know.

Somewhere at the heart
of the universe sounds the
true mystic note: Me.

by Peter Porter (1929-2010)

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To make an end is to make a beginning

Posted in Poetry with tags , , , on January 1, 2014 by telescoper

So, it’s New Year’s Day again. I’d like to take the opportunity to convey my very best wishes to everyone who follows this blog and to thank you all for showing an interest in my ramblings.

The beginning of a new year seems an appropriate time to post something from T.S. Eliot’s remarkable poetic meditation on the redemptive nature of time, Four Quartets. This is the last section, Part V, of the last of the four poems, Little Gidding.

What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make and end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from. And every phrase
And sentence that is right (where every word is at home,
Taking its place to support the others,
The word neither diffident nor ostentatious,
An easy commerce of the old and the new,
The common word exact without vulgarity,
The formal word precise but not pedantic,
The complete consort dancing together)
Every phrase and every sentence is an end and a beginning,
Every poem an epitaph. And any action
Is a step to the block, to the fire, down the sea’s throat
Or to an illegible stone: and that is where we start.
We die with the dying:
See, they depart, and we go with them.
We are born with the dead:
See, they return, and bring us with them.
The moment of the rose and the moment of the yew-tree
Are of equal duration. A people without history
Is not redeemed from time, for history is a pattern
Of timeless moments. So, while the light fails
On a winter’s afternoon, in a secluded chapel
History is now and England.

With the drawing of this Love and the voice of this
     Calling

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always—
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.

Little Gidding, Part V, the last of the Four Quartets by T.S. Eliot.

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Ring Out, Wild Bells

Posted in Poetry with tags on December 30, 2013 by telescoper

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.
Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.
Ring out the grief that saps the mind,
For those that here we see no more,
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.
Ring out a slowly dying cause,
And ancient forms of party strife;
Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.
Ring out the want, the care, the sin,
The faithless coldness of the times;
Ring out, ring out thy mournful rhymes,
But ring the fuller minstrel in.
Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.
Ring out old shapes of foul disease,
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.
Ring in the valiant man and free,
The larger heart the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.

by Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809-92)

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Winter Heavens

Posted in Poetry with tags , , on December 21, 2013 by telescoper

Sharp is the night, but stars with frost alive
Leap off the rim of earth across the dome.
It is a night to make the heavens our home
More than the nest whereto apace we strive.
Lengths down our road each fir-tree seems a hive,
In swarms outrushing from the golden comb.
They waken waves of thoughts that burst to foam:
The living throb in me, the dead revive.
Yon mantle clothes us: there, past mortal breath,
Life glistens on the river of the death.
It folds us, flesh and dust; and have we knelt,
Or never knelt, or eyed as kine the springs
Of radiance, the radiance enrings:
And this is the soul’s haven to have felt.

by George Meredith (1828-1909)

 

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On Monsieur’s Departure

Posted in History, Poetry with tags , on December 16, 2013 by telescoper

I grieve and dare not show my discontent,
I love and yet am forced to seem to hate,
I do, yet dare not say I ever meant,
I seem stark mute but inwardly to prate.
I am and not, I freeze and yet am burned.
Since from myself another self I turned.

My care is like my shadow in the sun,
Follows me flying, flies when I pursue it,
Stands and lies by me, doth what I have done.
His too familiar care doth make me rue it.
No means I find to rid him from my breast,
Till by the end of things it be supprest.

Some gentler passion slide into my mind,
For I am soft and made of melting snow;
Or be more cruel, love, and so be kind.
Let me or float or sink, be high or low.
Or let me live with some more sweet content,
Or die and so forget what love ere meant.

by Elizabeth I (1533-1603)

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Haikus for the Day

Posted in Biographical, Poetry on December 6, 2013 by telescoper

Invited guest of
the Japanese Embassy
in Piccadilly

“A Symposium”
they call this. Lectures followed
by wine (hopefully)..

Astronomy and
Space Science unite nations.
One cosmos for all!

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Night Sky

Posted in Poetry, The Universe and Stuff with tags , on November 29, 2013 by telescoper

 

What they are saying is
that there is life there, too:
that the universe is the size it is
to enable us to catch up.

They have gone on from the human:
that shining is a reflection
of their intelligence. Godhead
is the colonisation by mind

of untenanted space. It is its own
light, a statement beyond language
of conceptual truth. Every night
is a rinsing myself of the darkness

that is in my veins. I let the stars inject me
with fire, silent as it is far,
but certain in its cauterising
of my despair. I am a slow

traveller, but there is more than time
to arrive. Resting in the intervals
of my breathing, I pick up the signals
relayed to me from a periphery I comprehend.

by Ronald Stuart Thomas (1913-2000)

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Sunset over Falmer Campus

Posted in Brighton, Poetry with tags , , , on November 15, 2013 by telescoper

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Ensanguining the skies
How heavily it dies
Into the west away;
Past touch and sight and sound
Not further to be found,
How hopeless under ground
Falls the remorseful day.

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Strange Meeting – A Poem for Armistice Day

Posted in History, Poetry on November 11, 2013 by telescoper

I’ve been travelling all morning, but managed to observe the Armistice Day minute’s silence, standing outside the station in the pouring rain, while I was waiting for a connecting train.

Anyway, this poem, Strange Meeting was written by Wilfred Owen, who died just a few days before the Armistice came into effect in 1918. It’s a poem that needs to be read repeatedly to be fully appreciated, but there is one line that is utterly devastating straight away: “I am the enemy you killed, my friend”..

 It seemed that out of the battle I escaped
Down some profound dull tunnel, long since scooped
Through granites which Titanic wars had groined.
Yet also there encumbered sleepers groaned,
Too fast in thought or death to be bestirred.
Then, as I probed them, one sprang up, and stared
With piteous recognition in fixed eyes,
Lifting distressful hands as if to bless.
And by his smile, I knew that sullen hall;
By his dead smile, I knew we stood in Hell.
With a thousand fears that vision’s face was grained;
Yet no blood reached there from the upper ground,
And no guns thumped, or down the flues made moan.
“Strange, friend,” I said, “Here is no cause to mourn.”
“None,” said the other, “Save the undone years,
The hopelessness. Whatever hope is yours,
Was my life also; I went hunting wild
After the wildest beauty in the world,
Which lies not calm in eyes, or braided hair,
But mocks the steady running of the hour,
And if it grieves, grieves richlier than here.
For by my glee might many men have laughed,
And of my weeping something has been left,
Which must die now. I mean the truth untold,
The pity of war, the pity war distilled.
Now men will go content with what we spoiled.
Or, discontent, boil bloody, and be spilled.
They will be swift with swiftness of the tigress,
None will break ranks, though nations trek from progress.
Courage was mine, and I had mystery;
Wisdom was mine, and I had mastery;
To miss the march of this retreating world
Into vain citadels that are not walled.
Then, when much blood had clogged their chariot-wheels
I would go up and wash them from sweet wells,
Even with truths that lie too deep for taint.
I would have poured my spirit without stint
But not through wounds; not on the cess of war.
Foreheads of men have bled where no wounds were.
I am the enemy you killed, my friend.
I knew you in this dark; for so you frowned
Yesterday through me as you jabbed and killed.
I parried; but my hands were loath and cold.
Let us sleep now . . .”

Lest we forget.

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