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The Invaders

Posted in Poetry with tags , , on October 7, 2011 by telescoper

Coming by night, furtively, one by one
They infiltrate according to the Plan,
Their orders memorized and their disguise
Impenetrable. With the rising sun
Our citizens welcome them. Nobody can
Think that such charming creatures might be spies.

So feeble, so helpless, no one could suspect
They come to make this commonwealth their prey;
So few, they pose no threat; their cohort grows
So imperceptibly that we neglect
To notice how it musters day by day
And, unalarmed, we watch as they impose

Themselves, make friends in all directions, take
Impressions of all keys. They gain access
To all our secrets; learn to speak our tongue
Like natives; profit by each false move we make;
Work on our weaknesses; observe and guess
The sources of power and study them to be strong.

And when it happens, there will be no fuss,
No streets running with blood, no barricade.
We shall simply wake one morning to discover,
As those who ruled this city before us
Found by each door a headstone and a spade,
That a new generation has taken over.

by A. D. Hope (1907-2000).

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Indian Summer, a Poem

Posted in Poetry with tags , , on October 2, 2011 by telescoper

These are the days when birds come back,
A very few, a bird or two,
To take a backward look.

These are the days when skies put on
The old, old sophistries of June, —
A blue and gold mistake.

Oh, fraud that cannot cheat the bee,
Almost thy plausibility
Induces my belief,

Till ranks of seeds their witness bear,
And softly through the altered air
Hurries a timid leaf!

Oh, sacrament of summer days,
Oh, last communion in the haze,
Permit a child to join,

Thy sacred emblems to partake,
Thy consecrated bread to break,
Taste thine immortal wine!

by Emily Dickinson (1830-1886).

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Desiderata

Posted in Poetry with tags , on September 30, 2011 by telescoper

I’m a bit surprised with myself for not posting this before now. I suppose one reason is that I feared it might be so well known that it would be considered a bit of cliché. However, at the end of a stressful week it seems a good time to post  Desiderata by Max Ehrmann, which I think contains much wisdom and which I always find a calming influence in anxious times. I know some people think this piece is nothing but a collection of platitudes, but I think it’s more than that. In any case,  if nothing else, it provides  useful advice for anyone serving  on a grants panel or waiting to learn the outcome…

Go placidly amid the noise and the haste,
and remember what peace there may be in silence.

As far as possible, without surrender,
be on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly;
and listen to others,
even to the dull and the ignorant;
they too have their story.
Avoid loud and aggressive persons;
they are vexatious to the spirit.

If you compare yourself with others,
you may become vain or bitter,
for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.
Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.
Keep interested in your own career, however humble;
it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.

Exercise caution in your business affairs,
for the world is full of trickery.
But let this not blind you to what virtue there is;
many persons strive for high ideals,
and everywhere life is full of heroism.
Be yourself. Especially do not feign affection.
Neither be cynical about love,
for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment,
it is as perennial as the grass.

Take kindly the counsel of the years,
gracefully surrendering the things of youth.
Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune.
But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings.
Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.

Beyond a wholesome discipline,
be gentle with yourself.
You are a child of the universe
no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Therefore be at peace with God,
whatever you conceive Him to be.
And whatever your labors and aspirations,
in the noisy confusion of life,
keep peace in your soul.

With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams,
it is still a beautiful world.
Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.

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Euclid Alone Has looked On Beauty Bare

Posted in Euclid, Poetry, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , on September 25, 2011 by telescoper

Euclid alone has looked on Beauty bare.
Let all who prate of Beauty hold their peace,
And lay them prone upon the earth and cease
To ponder on themselves, the while they stare
At nothing, intricately drawn nowhere
In shapes of shifting lineage; let geese
Gabble and hiss, but heroes seek release
From dusty bondage into luminous air.
O blinding hour, O holy, terrible day,
When first the shaft into his vision shone
Of light anatomized! Euclid alone
Has looked on Beauty bare. Fortunate they
Who, though once only and then but far away,
Have heard her massive sandal set on stone.

by Edna St Vincent Millay (1892-1950)

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And Death shall have no Dominion

Posted in Poetry with tags , , on September 17, 2011 by telescoper

I’ve been meaning to post this marvellous reading by Dylan Thomas of his poem, And Death Shall Have No Dominion, and the sad news of the death of four miners in Gleision colliery near Pontardawe not far from Thomas’ own home town of Swansea makes this a fitting time to post it as a mark of respect to the four men and their grieving families.

And death shall have no dominion.
Dead mean naked they shall be one
With the man in the wind and the west moon;
When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,
They shall have stars at elbow and foot;
Though they go mad they shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;
Though lovers be lost love shall not;
And death shall have no dominion.

And death shall have no dominion.
Under the windings of the sea
They lying long shall not die windily;
Twisting on racks when sinews give way,
Strapped to a wheel, yet they shall not break;
Faith in their hands shall snap in two,
And the unicorn evils run them through;
Split all ends up they shan’t crack;
And death shall have no dominion.

And death shall have no dominion.
No more may gulls cry at their ears
Or waves break loud on the seashores;
Where blew a flower may a flower no more
Lift its head to the blows of the rain;
Though they be mad and dead as nails,
Heads of the characters hammer through daisies;
Break in the sun till the sun breaks down,
And death shall have no dominion.

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Dolor

Posted in Poetry with tags , on September 12, 2011 by telescoper

I have known the inexorable sadness of pencils,
Neat in their boxes, dolor of pad and paper-weight,
All the misery of manila folders and mucilage,
Desolation in immaculate public places,
Lonely reception room, lavatory, switchboard,
The unalterable pathos of basin and pitcher,
Ritual of multigraph, paper-clip, comma,
Endless duplication of lives and objects.
And I have seen dust from the walls of institutions,
Finer than flour, alive, more dangerous than silica,
Sift, almost invisible, through long afternoons of tedium,
Dropping a fine film on nails and delicate eyebrows,
Glazing the pale hair, the duplicate grey standard faces.

by Theordore Roethke (1908-63).

 

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The Rainbow

Posted in Poetry with tags , on September 4, 2011 by telescoper

It’s almost sunset, but I just saw a rainbow on the way back from the corner shop. It reminded me of this lovely little poem.

My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die!
The Child is father of the Man;
I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.

by William Wordsworth (1770-1850).

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MCMXIV

Posted in Poetry with tags , , on August 29, 2011 by telescoper

Those long uneven lines
Standing as patiently
As if they were stretched outside
The Oval or Villa Park,
The crowns of hats, the sun
On moustached archaic faces
Grinning as if it were all
An August Bank Holiday lark;
And the shut shops, the bleached
Established names on the sunblinds,
The farthings and sovereigns,
And dark-clothed children at play
Called after kings and queens,
The tin advertisements
For cocoa and twist, and the pubs
Wide open all day;
And the countryside not caring
The place-names all hazed over
With flowering grasses, and fields
Shadowing Domesday lines
Under wheats’ restless silence;
The differently-dressed servants
With tiny rooms in huge houses,
The dust behind limousines;
Never such innocence,
Never before or since,
As changed itself to past
Without a word–the men
Leaving the gardens tidy,
The thousands of marriages
Lasting a little while longer:
Never such innocence again.

by Philip Larkin (1922-1985).

I came across this while searching for a poem to post on an August Bank Holiday  (because today is one of those). I hadn’t expect to find something like this though! Larkin isn’t known as a war poet, but I find his detachment and use of irony in this poem- e.g. comparing the lines of men in the trenches to those queuing to watch cricket or football – as devastating as some of the more obviously visceral works of the genre.

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The Salutation

Posted in Poetry with tags , , on August 22, 2011 by telescoper

It’s been far too long since I posted a poem by my favourite of the metaphysical poets, Thomas Traherne (who lived from c. 1636 to 1674), so here’s another of his remarkable works, called The Salutation, in which he ponders the deepest questions of existence complete with authentic 17th century spelling…

These little Limbs,
These Eys and Hands which here I find,
This panting Heart wherwith my Life begins;
Where have ye been? Behind
What Curtain were ye from me hid so long!
Where was, in what Abyss, my new-made Tongue?

When silent I
So many thousand thousand Years
Beneath the Dust did in a Chaos ly,
How could I Smiles, or Tears,
Or Lips, or Hands, or Eys, or Ears perceiv?
Welcom ye Treasures which I now receiv.

I that so long
Was Nothing from Eternity,
Did little think such Joys as Ear and Tongue
To celebrat or see:
Such Sounds to hear, such Hands to feel, such Feet,
Beneath the Skies, on such a Ground to meet.

New burnisht Joys!
Which finest Gold and Pearl excell!
Such sacred Treasures are the Limbs of Boys
In which a Soul doth dwell:
Their organized Joints and azure Veins
More Wealth include than all the World contains.

From Dust I rise
And out of Nothing now awake;
These brighter Regions which salute mine Eys
A Gift from God I take:
The Earth, the Seas, the Light, the lofty Skies,
The Sun and Stars are mine; if these I prize.

A Stranger here,
Strange things doth meet, strange Glory see,
Strange Treasures lodg’d in this fair World appear,
Strange all and New to me:
But that they mine should be who Nothing was,
That Strangest is of all; yet brought to pass.

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More Cosmological Haiku

Posted in Poetry, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , , on August 18, 2011 by telescoper

In view of my current rather hectic schedule – why else would I be up at this ungodly hour? – I thought I’d combine another bit of recycling with some audience participation. I’ve updated below the list of Haiku I posted some time ago with some new ones I’ve jotted down at random intervals over the intervening months.

How about a few Haiku of your own on themes connected to astronomy, cosmology or physics?

Don’t be worried about making the style of your contributions too authentic, just make sure they are 17 syllables in total, and split into three lines of 5, 7 and 5 syllables respectively.

Here are some of my own to get you started:

Quantum Gravity:
The troublesome double-act
Of Little and Large

Gravity’s waves are
Traceless; which does not mean they
Can never be found

The Big Bang wasn’t
So big, at least not when you
Think in decibels.

Cosmological
Constant and Dark Energy
Are vacuous names

Microwave Background
Photons remember a time
When they were hotter

Isotropic and
Homogeneous metric?
Robertson-Walker

Galaxies evolve
In a complicated way
We don’t understand

Acceleration:
Type Ia Supernovae
Gave us the first clue

Cosmic Inflation
Could have stretched the Universe
And made it flatter

Astrophysicist
Is what I’m told is my Job
Title. Whatever.

“Clusters look cool,”  said
Sunyaev and Zel’dovich,
“because they are hot”.

Gaussianity
is produced by inflation,
normally speaking.

Gravity waves are
a kind of perturbation;
they make you tensor

Bubble collisions
Leave marks in the C-M-B
To please A. Linde

This Haiku contains
“Baryon Oscillations”
in its middle line.

What should we build next:
S-K-A or E-L-T?
Or maybe neither…?

J W* S T,
(the James Webb Space Telescope);
long name, big budget

* “W” has to be pronounced “dubya” for this one to work!

Contributions welcome via the comments box. The best one gets a chance to win Bully’s star prize.

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