SET ADRIFT BY SCIENCE                                                                          

I lose the thread, quickly, when I

consider the context of all I do or say:

the play of light out there, where

night holds sway and I can safely

watch other stars far too far away

to really understand what it is I’m

part of; and the reasons why

I’m not wholly satisfied with the

transience of daffodils, cathedrals,

the delicacy of a blue-grey eye.

 

Perhaps if I could write in sight

of the Hanging Gardens or the Mausoleum –

any of the Seven Wonders gone (not Giza,

which is too familiar) – I’d claim that heaven

was close by this Earth, was even of it;

yet, in spite of understanding there is a

world in the swirling of tea leaves

and perfection in the smile of a child,

it has to be said that science’s sirens

sing so finely they end all old beliefs.

 

Odysseus saw the dilemma here,

caused his ordinary crew to strap him

to the mast and fill their ears with wax,

so they would not hear what he feared would

otherwise take their earth-bound lives, too great

temptations, forgetting the rights and wrongs of

peoples, nations – all to be lured, a single sort

of unimportant oddity, and smashed upon

the hidden rocks in an endless sea. Would

they had never slipped silently from port

 

as soon as the wind was up and sails set fair,

we all prepared to lay down our lives for this

windblown lord – until, that is, alone, in awe,

he heard the new majesty in song. Why were we so

subservient for so long, for so little? The gap between

royal and loyal subject is now a devalued notion,

unlike the one-time maritime hierarchy

of, say, the Port of Hythe or the harbour at Rhodes;

now the distinctions fall to powers of destruction –

awaiting extinction in listless anarchy.

 

To wit, I feel fascination yet set adrift

at the very thought of spatial holes, as if

there were an apt expression, in any language,

for the sucking in and swallowing of a  

million Earths in one sitting; its measure

always approximate, meaningless,

and certain in its vastness to ignore

all benchmarks of human behaviour;

leaving man wandering, weightless,

fatally confused yet perhaps quite sure

 

to wear our pretty dancing shoes to

walk in, lose control of tongues and

talk in riddles until we cede domain, slip into

the quicksands of a dark and marshy waste

where we’ll slowly sink and, within a blink

of an eye (in our new world’s terms),

we’ll fold into the thickening mud to take

our place as part of one alone of a

billion specks of weightless dust whose fate

is sealed, for good, let’s hope, for pity’s sake.