Poetry and Physics

Here is a nice poem by W.H. Auden. You can hear him read it here. 

After Reading a Child's Guide to Modern Physics

If all a top physicist knows

About the Truth be true,

Then, for all the so-and-so's,

Futility and grime,

Our common world contains,

We have a better time

Than the Greater Nebulae do,

Or the atoms in our brains.

Marriage is rarely bliss

But, surely it would be worse

As particles to pelt

At thousands of miles per sec

About a universe

Wherein a lover's kiss

Would either not be felt

Or break the loved one's neck.

Though the face at which I stare

While shaving it be cruel

For, year after year, it repels

An ageing suitor, it has,

Thank God, sufficient mass

To be altogether there,

Not an indeterminate gruel

Which is partly somewhere else.

Our eyes prefer to suppose

That a habitable place

Has a geocentric view,

That architects enclose

A quiet Euclidian space:

Exploded myths - but who

Could feel at home astraddle

An ever expanding saddle?

This passion of our kind

For the process of finding out

Is a fact one can hardly doubt,

But I would rejoice in it more

If I knew more clearly what

We wanted the knowledge for,

Felt certain still that the mind

Is free to know or not.

It has chosen once, it seems,

And whether our concern

For magnitude's extremes

Really become a creature

Who comes in a median size,

Or politicizing Nature

Be altogether wise,

Is something we shall learn. 

Sick again...

Last night we picked out, bought, and carried home our Christmas tree from the sale down the street. Unfortunately, this is how I felt during the decoration party afterwards:



(I interpret that to be the look of illness, not constipation, but it's arguable, I admit.)

This makes about the fourth or fifth consecutive trip back home to MS after which I have become ill, usually a head cold. It's hard to call it a coincidence at this point. I suppose it could just be the stress of the long drive (~15hrs in holiday traffic), particularly with the back and forth between families in MS.

As my Italian friend says "Traveling is not for you. You should think of becoming a tree."

I agree.