PARADOX HILL: "FROM APPALACHIA TO LUNAR SHORE, REVISED EDITION"

AFTER HEARING A LECTURE ON MODERN PHYSICS

83 AFTER HEARING A LECTURE ON MODERN PHYSICS Where the atoms sing where the neutrons flow In the mystic fog and the cosmic snow A bell once rang where the cyclotron In the midnight moves and the world moves on A star once stopped on a desert bay Where a stable stood where a child first lay In the aureole of the vapored fire And the shepherds heard from the bending choir The atoms’ song in the desert night A red chief stood with his gourd of light Where the mesa rose to the rising sun Where the atoms sing and the worlds are one And the worlds all sing on the singing wires Of a million moons in the swinging fires Of magnetic fields still the daisies move In their meadow fields in the bending grove Still the willows blow as in other years The willows danced to the singing spheres Now the forests sway to the atoms’ chord Where the rust is laid on a holy sword The atoms move in the rusted blade And the nightingales from a far-off glade Sing out again where the cyclotron In the midnight moves to the curving dawn 84 Where the music falls on magnetic strands Angelic lutes in illumined hands Once struck the note where the neutrons run And the center glows and the worlds are one. ...