8157. A HUNDRED CURIOUS MOMENTS

A HUNDRED 

CURIOUS MOMENTS

It started me young, all this

stuff with the atom : how tables

and hammers and everything else

weren't really 'solid' at all. Just

seemingly so, in a whizzing 

concoction of too small to see 

atoms with spaces between. 

Then that got smaller, things

that made up the atom  -  all

that sacrificial stuff of electrons

and nucleus and protons and the

rest. Like a jungle army of the

purely mad, all this Science got

pounded in and went marching on.

I never knew; and I never cared;

just 'that table better have a chair.' 

-

Now it's all different again, and I

am old. All those missed endeavors

are over for me. Those atoms, long 

ago smashed into smaller pieces, and

now the quarks and leptons on retainer,

whose speeding tracks are spotted in

accelerators only but not one by one.

-

We only detect the muffled screams 

now, of matter and radiation rushing.

And nod we do at all other conclusions :

the smashing of particles in mile-long

chutes, the dancing of atoms in horrid

canals where time and space itself are

blown apart. Oh! We are so smart!

-

Yet I know the black smoke that lingers

'round this fire known as Life to be the

black smoke of toil and strife : we go on,

with words and concepts, falling error

over error each for a little time, a sparse

amount of something we cannot identify.

Bye-bye! Bye-bye!