To celebrate National Science Week we’ll be publishing a science poem of the day this week. The poems are from the Science Made Marvellous series of poetry books published in National Science Week in 2010 by The Poets Union.
The three books are:
- Holding Patterns: physics & engineering poems (1.2MB PDF)
- Earthly Matters: biology & geology poems (1MB PDF)
- Law & Impulse: maths & chemistry poems (1.1MB PDF)
Today’s poem is from Holding Patterns: physics & engineering poems.
David Mortimer
Singularity
Causation is nowhere if
All the world is one event
Spring of a butterfly’s wing stiff
With no meaning in the cyclone’s course
And billiard-balls and planets sent
At angles skewed like letters in a name
Told like whimsies in a story
That accumulate but lay no claim
To deeper plays of force on force
Or formulae for simpler glory
More than the one continual unfolding
Awkward shape that always was
Already-all-of space and time and holding
Everywhere at bay the word — because
