Holy Physics

‘…is religious talk actually compatible with science? It is interesting to note that in one prestigious area of science – an area which is often viewed as the archetype of all science - such talk is readily accepted. That area is theoretical physics. As Margaret Wertheim has pointed out, most of the great physcisits of the past, from Copernicus to Clerk Maxwell, insisted that their work was primarily and essentially relgiious. Rather more remarkably, their modern successors still make the same claim… In spite of the officially secular climate of modern science, physicists have continued to retain a quasi-religious attitude to their work. They have continued to comport themselves as a scientific priesthood, and to present themselves to the public in that light.’ Mary Midgley, Science and Poetry, Routeledge, 2003

‘It is perfectly possible for a scientist to believe in God, and even to find scientific evidence for God’s existence. To sceptics this might suggest a rather nutty combination of laboratory-bore and Jesus-freak. But when a scientist of James Clerk Maxwell’s eminence uses molecular structure as an argument for the existence of God, few will feel qualified to laugh.’ John Carey, Editor, Faber Book of Science, 2005

‘…the molecules out of which these systems are built - the foundation-stones of the material universe – remain unbroken and unworn. They continue this day as they were created – perfect in number and measure and weight and from the ineffaceable character impressed on them we may learn that those aspirations after accuracy in measurement, and justice in action, which we reckon among our noblest attributes as men, are ours because they are essential constituents of Him who in the beginning created, not only the heaven and the earth, but the materials of which heaven and earth consist.’ James Clerk Maxwell, Scientist, Discourse on Molecules, 1873

‘The Scot James Clerk Maxwell (1831-79) has been ranked with Newton and Einstein as scientific innovator. He was the first to produce a unified theory of electricity and magnestism…and he formulated the concept of electromagnetic waves (of which heat, light, radio waves and X-rays are all examples)…Cultured, widely-read and humorous…Maxwell was also a Christian…’ John Carey, Editor, Faber Book of Science

‘I believe that an orderly universe, one indifferent to human preoccupations, in which everything has an explanation even if we still have a long way to go before we find it, is a more beautiful, more wonderful place than a universe tricked out with capricious, ad hoc magic.’ Richard Dawkins, Unweaving the Rainbow, Penguin, 1998

‘Can then physics and chemistry out of themselves explain that a pin’s-head ball of cells in the course of so many weeks becomes a child?’ Sir Charles Sherrington, Physiologist, (1857-1952), Man and His Nature, Cambridge University Press, 1951

‘Einstein himself showed how seriously he took this thought by constantly refering to God in explaining his own reasoning, (‘God does not play dice’… ‘The Lord is subtle but not malicious’ and so forth). And he explicitly said that he meant it…Later physicists might have been expected to dismiss this approach as a mere personal quirk of Einstein’s, but they have not. Instead, many of them have developed it in best-selling books with titles such as God and The New Physics, The Mind of God, The God Particle, The Physics of Immortailty: Modern Comsomolgy, God and the Resurrection of the Dead and many more.’ Mary Midgley, Science and Poetry, Routeledge, 2003

Poem of Holy Physics

How this bump-into world has dissolved -

in stare of science, philosophy, poetry, art;

Impressionists assessing interplay of matter,

light; restless atoms reducing smooth world

to strings of pearls - solidity itself illusion -

trick of the mind; the world, familiar reality,

more like a hive of bees - matter buzzing,

humming in chaotic orderliness, systemic.

Perception perhaps limited; unknown boundaries

blinding, muffling - what other sense might find

new visions here beyond our sight, touch, hearing;

some smell or taste, more divine than strawberries!

ethereal perfumes to overwhelm the lily’s white sugar,

blooms outdazzling Van Gogh’s hot sunflower souls -

dogs, cats, rodents, already superior at assessing air;

what sight might challenge light - Highland, African

sunsets; artists’ understanding, expression, use of hues;

what goes on under swimming pigments, light vehicles,

receptacles, barriers; where being vibrates,

rattles bones, makes the skull sing, dances

eyes, wires fingers to musical heart.

Furious red cells are burning up life,

neuro-crackling in the brain’s bright galaxy,

neurones’ star bodies projecting dendrites -

flower rays, speaking nervously, impulsively

to themselves in silver/black synapsian skies;

routing axons, communicating, chattering on

the nature of reality - where cells are giants -

electrons, mice; neutrinos numberless in sun,

stars - featherweight jockeys chasing light -

streaming invisibly; so much invisible between

elements – Arisotletian awareness; Fire, Water,

Air, Earth, more real than subatomic poetry

of quarks flavoured up, down, top, strange,

charm, than anti-quarks - order with chaos

at its heart. Look inward or outward; space,

matter, energy - prescriptions of light big enough

for God, minnowskin, understanding stars, planets,

the brain’s bright universe; the same holy physics.

The nature of energy is yet but poorly understood,

will not yield to that dull slavery of no mystery,

glory; we cannot split off this or that, specialise,

think we have captured meaning, life as a fish,

all conundrums written upon - even on Earth -

with all we have discovered, learned; now printing

our own prescription, life script, no force has come

more powerful to drive, mesmerise - make us

willing servants, than love; love overpowering

even vivid life’s most primitive, overwritten,

sacred, selected command – to live, survive

at all costs, nurture the holy script

into new bodies; far-fetched some

Cyclops scientists cry, but never suggest

another name for what it is that operates

among the stars, atoms, particles and dark;

what flies among the space - more subtle

and powerful than light, yet more invisible –

whole organisms melting, yet still alive, still

shining, breaking down into first molecules;

dreaming possibilities with such old energy.

‘The speed of light is known,/ But not the speed of thought/ crossing the Milky Way/ on rapid wings of prayer.// Someday it may be shown/How Light and Darkness fought/ When Evil lost the Day/ Upon the prism’s stair.’ AM Sullivan, Telescopic Mirror

‘[Ernest Rutherford 1871-1937] concluded that most of an atom’s mass resided in a minute, positively charged nucleus at the centre, while the electrons went around the outside – very much like planets orbiting the massive sun. Most of the atom was just empty space. If an atom were expanded to the size of the dome of St Paul’s Cathedral, virtually all its mass would lie within a central nucleus no larger than an orange…[Rutherford] maintained he was completely surprised. One wonders if he hadn’t had a secret inkling. He was superlatively good at making predictions about nature’. CP Snow, The Physicists, Macmillan, 1981

‘But if every gram of material contains this tremendous energy, why did it go so long unnoticed? The answer is simple enough: so long as none of the energy is given off externally, it cannot be observed. It is as though a man who is fabulously rich should never spend or give away a cent; no one could tell how rich he was.’ Einstein on e=mc2, Science Illustrated, 1946

What inhabits the space, is

What inhabits the space, is; in darkness,

light also - like the Sun to be glimpsed

obliquely, uncontainable by eye, thought;

any conturbation of the struggling heart -

who learns how to burst with such love

for a child scrambled from these genes

in all the Universe, this molecular chain;

impossible apart from being, happening.

Here is the clue to God the Father/Mother,

this learning of love - a higher movement

towards the invisible; heights of perception

where certainty is lost - is theory, chimera -

in that aching place spirits land with joy;

startled by the first doubt, explode away.

*

Hidden in the pockets of life, dark seams,

the riches that make it possible, material;

answers that we do not know how to decipher,

or why we do not know how - when so much

is now known; worked out, calculated

to last decimal point comprehendable.

We have caught all the pretty silver fish,

beautiful rainbow salmon, so muscular -

ignorant of the great creatures of the deep,

and why their plastic skin is - water atoms

are; what drove the solar flux and flare,

the great conturbation of the heavens -

that day, then; stars and matter convulsing

into this hand here today, writing this here.

‘Electrons and other subatomic particles do not move along preditable paths, and they behave, incomprehensibly, like waves as well as particles. It seems that though they are the basic components of our material world, and of us, they are not ‘things’ at all, in the sense of having an independent identity, but remain in a suspended state until someone observes or measures them, whereupon they ‘collapse’ into one of many possible versions of reality. Thus the observer effectively creates the universe, or his version of it, by his observations.’ Faber Book of Science, 2005

Defineable as a Mongoose

The Universe holds its breath a little in life -

coagulation, gelling of molecules, anchored

here a moment - amid all that black sea scattered

with lights; a sculpting in energy, shaping, pause

with authorial boundary – a boundary itself energy,

but distinct, defineable as you, a flower, mongoose.

The dancing patterned, figured particularly awhile,

in the enormous music of the universe, these steps

within this identity; each one a vaguely stationery

miracle, manageable by organic life - a movement

that arose from water and dust, sea and earth -

all daughters of light, evolving harmony among

that originally shapeless creativity unleashed;

feeling its way back to first principles - ideas,

like love, compassion, freedom; each life

compression of primal energy to identity,

being this thing or that at this time; temporary

housing, genomic template, harbour, matrix –

such dissolution of matter at the end of life,

crumbling back into disunited molecules -

depersonified, cut loose; journeying to be a leaf,

paper, spot of a ladybird - in the melting of glue,

the glue must be revealed, binding agent, hooks

that held us here in the ancient, evolving script -

the dissolution of our personal energy, confined

so brilliantly by life, seen only clearly in the eye,

read only by the understanding heart, must be

as flash, Small Bang - we go on seeding, part,

still of everything that is, was - same molecules,

energy unlimited; in the flash itself, we are light.

‘Chaos is beautiful. This is not accident. It is visible evidence of the beauty of mathematics, a beauty normally confined within the inner eye of the mathematician but which here spills over into the everyday world of human senses.’ Ian Stewart, New Scientist, 1989

‘Fractal pictures, and their link with chaos, have inspired science-writers to make claims about the underlying ‘beauty’ of the nature of mathematics.’ Faber Book of Science, 2005

A Universe just like this one

I guess if you were going to base a Universe

on principles of creativity, freedom - beauty;

it would become, look, be…why, just like this one!

Though perhaps without fears, possibility theorems

about destruction of such beauty - careless disregard

for this one garden; illogically bringing about its end.

‘IMMORTAL LOVE! who ere the morn of Time,/ On wings outstretch’d, o’er Chaos hung sublime;/ Warm’d into life the bursting egg of Night,/ And gave young Nature to admiring Light! -/ YOU! whose wide arms, in soft embraces hurl’d/ Round the vast frame, connect the whirling world!…’ Erasmus Darwin, 1731-1802, The Temple of Nature

‘…I can’t honestly complain:/ A certain minor light may still / leap incandescent// Out of kitchen table or chair/ As if a celestial burning took/ Possession of the most obtuse objects now and then - / Thus hallowing an interval/ Otherwise inconsequent// By bestowing largesse, honor,/ One might say Love.’ Sylvia Plath 1932-63, Black Rook in Rainy Weather

‘The concept of the universe as a strictly deterministic machine governed by eternal laws profoundly influenced the scientific world view, standing as it did in stark contrast to the old Aristotelian picture of the cosmos as a living organism.’ Paul Davies, The New Scientist Guide to Chaos, Penguin, 1991

‘All the power of magic consists in love. The work of magic is the attraction of one thing by another in virtue of their natural sympathy. The parts of the world, like the members of one animal…are united among themselves in the community of a single nature. From their communal relationship a common love is born and from this love a common attraction, and this is the true magic…Thus the lodestone attracts iron, amber, straw brimstone, fire, the Sun draws leaves and flowers towards itself, the Moon the seas…’ Marcel Ficino, Commentaire sur le Banquet de Platon, 1956 

‘No Western scientists after Kepler’s time could ever dare use terms such as love for forces of attraction, though today equally anthropormorphic – but hostile – words such as spite, cheart, selfish and grudging are the accepted coin of sociobiological discourse.’ Mary Midgley, Science and Poetry, Routeledge, 2003

‘The world is charged with the grandeur of God./ It will flame out, like shining from shook foil.’ God’s Grandeur, Gerard Manley Hopkins

‘Forces and fields are now  the main players in the game and mass is interchangeable with energy.’ Mary Midgley, Science and Poetry, Routeledge, 2003

‘The huge amounts of energy the formula (E=mc2) attributes to any given mass are not apparent in ordinary life since they are locked up in atoms of the mass, and can be released only by atomic fission…Einstein’s equation states that mass is convertible into energy, and vice-versa. Mass becomes, as it were, simply very, very concentrated energy.’ Faber Book of Science

There cannot be a Theory of Everything, without Love

There cannot be a Theory of Everything, without love -

that leaves out heart, consciousness, natural knowledge

of the soul; not metaphorical but real, experienced, felt.

Authorial and authored energy among atoms, gorgeous

laws; whatever chaos keeps things interesting, more real

than stars from which we came - more urgent than Earth,

our organic home, more powerful than the Sun - pressing,

endless, than the Universe. A Theory of Everything cannot

be, without love; its primal, sophisticated, driving energy,

dissipated because it has not been theorised - formulated.

What seed this original love planted in the human heart;

four billion years struggling - shivering in rooted dark -

bursting forth in birds, flowers, stickiness of new leaves,

bees; running wild in wildebeest - hopping frogs - flying

pterodactyl, eagle and Icarus wings melting away

to symbolic and dreamlike shining stuff of angels,

curtailed at blunted shoulder blade, sealed arrow quiver;

burning on through deep caves, green forest light - mud,

stone homes, theatres of sea and mountain; flowering

in each new person - a human creature hatching fresh,

ancient, from Creation - miraculously still alight;

look into their eyes, that seen burning is real, not

merely idealistic, not just metaphor, only symbol;

if energy vibrates at the heart of matter - as force,

power, would not passionate love fit the bill,

given its mastery over mankind, overrriding

even vivid self preservation - sacred even

to evolutionary command; superior to just

survival - passing of genetic codes to the future -

higher, possible explanation for the pointlessness

of the Universe

and its beauty.

‘Light All Askew in the Heavens: Einstein’s theory Triumphs.’ New York Times, US, 1919

Perhaps God knew everything first

Perhaps God knew everything first,

God the Scientist; Universal details,

human science must unravel slowly.

‘For by stroking him I have found out electricity./ For I perceived God’s light upon him both wax and fire./ For the Electrical fire is the spiritual; substance, which God sends from/ heaven to sustain the bodies both of man and beast.’ My Cat, Jeoffrey, Christopher Smart, 1722-71

‘From before all time/ The New Light beams for them/ and with eternal clarities/ infulsit and athwart/ the fore-times:/ era, period, epoch, hemera/ Through all orogeny;/ group, system, series, zone./ Brighting at the five life-layers,/ Species, species, genera, families, order.’ David Jones, 1895-1974, A Scientific Psalm

The connection, how codes communicate

with proteins remains still so mysterious -

as how mind, spirit, consciousness,

exist; connect to the physical body.

"Free will will not go out of style once the sequence is done." Francis Collins, interview with L. Roberts, 1999

‘The world from the standpoint of mechanics is an automaton, without any freedom determined from the beginning. I never like this extreme determinism, and I am glad modern physics has abandoned it.’ Max Born, Physicist, 1936

The necessity of faith is obvious, though tough 

The necessity of faith is obvious, though tough;

with proof, a concrete concept of God, freedom

evaporates - everything is not easy, but slavery.

Principles matter in the Universe, must operate

in the constant flux where life is possible;

organic brains as earth for the living soul,

this thing of energy, compatible with light -

God, spaces between matter’s grip; illusion,

dream grid, matrix - in sleep we feel it possible,

this experience of vaulting known physics, life -

saving the knowledge of the Genome - memory

of each tree and leaf seen; each interactive seed,

flower, building, person - everything is interesting.

Without faith, weaving in and out, slippery, elusive,

the message would be crude - this is a sophisticated

Universe, subtle in interaction; spiritual, intellectual,

physical, some strands better understood than others;

faith is a necessary challenge to preserve Free Will -

purpose; encouraging healthy independence from God,

on whom we depend for life. So culture of love is free,

untramelled always by compulsion, but that energy

that has no name but love, is there - us, conductive,

composed of the same stuff in essence, at core;

in the gorgeousness of organic robes, red blood.

Each hair of our head, one more miracle of existence -

micro-miracle, enough to contemplate all day, forever. 

‘So if anything can be defined as ‘the primary substance of the world’ it has to be energy itself…Since Heisenberg’s time, physicists have begun to say that the primary substance my turn out to be, not exactly energy but some form of space itself.’ Mary Midgley, Science and Poetry, Routeledge, 2003

‘And stitch (that dream) slowly and exactly…one longed to be able to taste the salt/ Of pity, to hold by bone the stone of grief,/ To take in by acknowledgement the light/ Of spring lilies in a purple vase, five white/ Birds flying before a thunderhead, to become/ Infinite by reflection, announcing out loud/ In one’s own language, by one’s own voice,/ The fabrication of these desires, this day/ Of their recitation.’ Pattian Rogers, The Voice of the Precambrian Sea

‘The Universe, it seems, is full of stuff that we can't see. Rotating galaxies do not have enough visible matter to stop them flying apart, so astronomers believe that some unseen 'dark matter' must be helping to hold them together. Meanwhile, a mysterious force appears to be pushing the Universe apart, which physicists have dubbed 'dark energy'. Here News@nature.com charts the expedition to track down the origins of these black mysteries: two of the largest outstanding puzzles of cosmology.’ News at Nature, 2006

‘Isaac Asimov has a dramatic illustration ‘it is as if all the matter of the universe were a single grain of sand, set in the middle of an empty room 20 miles long, 20 miles wide and 20 miles high. Yet, at the same time, it is as if that single grain of sand were pulverized into a thousand million million million fragments, for that is approximately the number of stars in the Universe.’ These re some of the sobering facts of astronomy, and you can see that they are beautiful.’ Richard Dawkins, Unweaving the Rainbow, Penguin, 1998

‘..it is / wonderful/ how things work: I will tell you/ about it/ because/ it is interesting/ and because, whatever is/ moves in weeds/ and stars and spider webs…I will show you/ the underlying that takes no image to itself,/ can not be shown or said,/ but weaves in and out of moons and bladderweeds,/ is all and/ beyond destruction/ because created fully in no/ particular form….’ A.R. Ammons, Identity

‘There is the world, the dream, and the one law./ The wish, the wisdom, and things as they are.// Inside the cave the burning sunlight showed/ A shade and forms between the light and shade,/ Neither real nor false nor subject to belief:/ If unfleshed, boneless also, not for life/ Or death or clear idea. But as in life/ Reflexive, multiple, with the brilliance of / The shining surface, an orchestral flare./ It is not to believe, the love or fear/ Or their profoundest definitiopn, death;/ But fully as an orchestra to accept,/ Making an answer, even if lament,/ In measured dance, with the whole instrument.’ Unscientific Postscript, Howard Memerov

‘The reason why particles like pigs and people do not normally seem to be waves is simply that their wavelengths are normally so short as to be undetectable. Nevertheless, distributed as waves they are, and that attribute provides explanations which are totally beyond the reach of classical physics’. Peter Atkins, Physical Chemist, Creation Revisited: the Origin of Space, Time and the Universe, Penguin Books, 1994

‘Even the walls are flowing, even the ceiling,/ Not only in terms of physics; the pictures/ Bob on each picture rail like floats on a line/ While the books on the shelves keep reeling/ Their titles ot into space and the carpet/ Keeps flying away to Arabia…’ Variation on Heraclitus, Louis MacNeice, 1907-63

Life seems a painting over light

Life seems a painting over light -

organic brush dipped in molecules,

drawing genomic patterns with words,

chemicals; converting ideas, formulae

into flesh, hands, eyes; evolved fear

of a trembling animal under leaves –

all harnessing of energy into temporary

identity, with only love binding always,

stringing the soul and body from darkness,

unformed freelance energy in the heavens.

The happening of Earth, her garden, principles

largely discoverable by men - but maintaining

her mystery, resilience to total explanation,

that might make arid her signature waters -

her miraculous understanding of light

among all these dead stars; her scripts

that care for the life of that blade of grass,

this fish; each with its own poetry, words

spoken as a shining print, here and now,

with us witnesses, as fellow celebrants -

beautiful conglomerations of molecules,

all hung awhile over nothing but energy.

‘Painting is a science, and should be pursued as an inquiry into the laws of nature. Why, then, may not a landscape painting be considered as a branch of natural philosophy, of which pictures are but the experiment?’ The History of Landscape Painting, John Constable

‘Thus seen, what was seen before as a point/ now appears as a pattern flowered from a thousand/ scintillas of matter impeccably spaced/ in kaleidoscope – spoked motifs as baroque/ as the snowflakes’ spiky shapes, ornate/ to the tips of their tines. Affined from the first/ to form, the amorphous dust becomes crystals or chrysanthemums or these/ petaled/ octets in the metal…’ The Point of a Pin [under magnification], Dorothy Donnelly

My touching of you is a miracle of illusion –

My touching of you is a miracle of illusion –

firm give of your skin, dampish hair tendrils,

gloss of your looking eyes - all are trembling -

just, in existence; an attraction of energy, light,

to your particular genomic co-ordinates - net.

What chance in all the universe of us standing

here, star-bones of your hand in mine;

we are blown invisibly by solar winds,

warming that blood of sea we channelled

here four billion years - turned red - fuel

and symbol; we built ourselves of metaphor,

intention, as sentences called by the Word –

‘The Word is Life, I am the Word and the Life’

spoken thus in darkness as principle, eventually,

became us among the impatient patient Universe.

The molecular noises of our planet can be heard

to the furthest reaches of space and imagination;

unsurpassable art realised until the next creature,

for each other exhibited; until our stirred creature,

produced by a similar conjunction of miracles, by

luck or God, whatever theory matches - enriches

your mind the most; appeals most to its dreaming

and intellectual culture, its siphoning of so much

energy - each skull is a blazing lantern enclosed -

from the plastic density of eyes conceived thus,

visible, emanating; how mysterious, sunglasses

shades over primitive and most sophisticated

truths nobody can lie about, conceal, mutate –

that reading Evolution has prompted - to navigate

about the energy in which we swim, which we are;

fantastically bound by this skin suit, physical outfit,

perfectly tailored for impossible bottling of energy

nobody could predict from the star or swamp -

could refine into you, the flower in your hand.

‘The Krebs cycle, the 9-toothed cogwheel that is largely responsible for making energy available to us, turns over at up to 100 revolutions per second, duplicated thousands of times in every cell.’ Richard Dawkins, Unweaving the Rainbow, Penguin, 1998

I cannot know you as skin and bones

I cannot know you as skin and bones,

when you are leaking from your eyes.

I cannot understand you as hair - nails,

when your hand touches me like a wire.

I can’t stop touching this warm bowl of you;

expect my bright fingers to go clean through.

‘ When I heard the learn'd astronomer/ When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,/ When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them../ I wander'd off by myself,/ In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,/ Look'd up in perfect silence at the stars.’ Walt Whitman

The heart as universal geiger counter

Reading the energy; heart as geiger counter,

registering love, cultivation of its principles,

from pilot seed scattered at the start - to art,

cultured practice - rehearsal of forgiveness;

passion, motivation beyond the nursery self.

Finding attraction from sublime chemistries,

arcane formulae, germinating for millennia -

fruiting this romance and that; offspring held

in thickened water, tentacle, tendril, fin, wing;

I’ve held you, somehow, a billion times before. 

If I could understand the force that sent this little pink flower

If I could understand the force that sent this little pink flower

to cup pale spring sun, dribbling nectar down her fresh frock,

I would be nearer to understanding why dead stars twinkle,

hearts beat; particles and charges understand order, chaos -

so perfectly as to make the world feel good; create texture,

illusory smooth matter - most especially in you, my family.

I’ve always looked up when I think of God

I’ve always looked up when I think of God,

to sky, that shining behind peephole Moon -

that bright white place beyond furthest black

and stars – my steeple fingers pointing there

during communications (that can feel a bit one-sided),

like lightning conductors - trying to channel energy -

when maybe I should have been looking down -

down, down, in and in, as we look into the holes

of eyes, glazed and flowery, to see the heart;

beyond blood, hot red swimming molecules.

To see Him still printed there,

in the body’s holiest scripture.

‘It begins to appear/ this is not what prayer is about./ It is the annihilation of difference,/ the consciousness of myself in you,/ of you in me; the emerging from the adolescence of nature/ into the adult geometry/ of the mind./ I begin to recognize/ you anew, God of form and number./ There are questions we are the solution/ to, others whose echoes we must expand/ to contain. Circular as our way/ is. It leads not back to that snake-haunted/ garden, but onward to the tall city/ of glass that is the laboratory of the spirit.’ Emerging, RS Thomas

Lord, Lord, where are you –

Lord, Lord, where are you. Where –

up there somewhere in vast gardens

of burning stars, spent planets,

polishing the tarnished Moon.

Up there breathing, combusting

experimental gases, explosions;

dreaming of more new worlds -

if Earth could ever be repeated,

her wasted creatures all re-printed,

abuse of natural culture prevented;

if this time the words that wrote

could hold some firm guarantee,

certificate of care, inbuilt responsibility;

whilst still resolving these philosophical

conundrums of Free Will - honouring

this stanch intellectual principle amid

so many necessary natural laws;

brilliant mechanics and process.

I have cried my small song into the storm,

but it did not carry - a raindrop into ocean;

why do you play this spiritual hide and seek,

offering arms - a smouldering certainty, then

unexpectedly, again, impossibly gone;

as Houdini unchaining from my heart.

OK, OK, I know, it’s me who moves away,

becomes disconnected, but it feels like you;

my praying like the strange song singing

to the invisible internet, electrified ether.

‘The very words, There is nothing! or, There was a time, when there was nothing! are self-contradictory. There is that within us which repels the proposition with as full and instantaneous a light, as if it bore evidence against the fact in the right of its own eternity….Not TO BE, then, is impossible: TO BE, incomprehensible. If thou hast mastered this intuition of absolute existence, thou wilt have learnt likewise, that it was this, and no other, which in the earlier ages seized the nobler minds, the elect among men, with a sort of sacred horror. This it was which first caused them to feel within themselves a something ineffably greater than their own individual nature. It was this which, raising them aloft, and projecting them to an ideal distance from themselves, prepared them to become the lights and awakening voices of other men, the founders of law and religion, the educators and foster-gods of mankind.’ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

‘Modern physics is in some ways extremely near to the doctrines of Heraclitus. If we replace the word ‘fire’ by the word ‘energy’ we can almost repeat his statements word for word from our modern point of view. Energy is in fact the substance from which all elementary particles, all atoms and therefore all things are made and energy is that which moves. Energy is a substance, since its total amount does not change… Energy may be called the fundamental cause for all change in the world…the elementary particles are certainly not eternal: they can actually be transformed into each other.’ Werner Heisenberg, Physics and Philosophy, The Revolution in Modern Science, Penguin 1990

‘To every Form of being is assigned,’/ ‘Thus calmly spake the venerable Sage,/ ‘An active Principle: - howe’er removed/ From sense and observation, it subsists/ In all things, in all natures; in the stars/ of azure heaven, the unenduring clouds,/ In flower and tree, in every pebbly stone/ That paves the brooks, the stationary rocks,/ The moving waters, and the invisible air./ Whate’re exists hath properties that spread/ Beyond itself, communicating good,/ A simple blessing, or with evil mixed;/ Spirit that knows no insulated spot,/ No chasm, no solitude; from link to link/ It circulates, the Soul of all the worlds./ This is the freedom of the universe;/ Unfolded still the more, more visible,/ The more we know; and yet is reverenced least,/ And least respected in the human Mind,/ Its most apparent home…’ William Wordsworth, 1770-1850, The Excursion

‘Dante calls Primum Mobile, the First Cause:/ ‘Love that moves the world and the other stars.’ Vernon Watkins, 1906-67, Discoveries

‘Science, like Art, is fun, a playing with truths.’ WH Auden

‘The development of the quantum theory of matter at the beginning of the twentieth century drastically altered conventional scientific wisdom. The conviction that the world was understandable had been science’s most important gift to civilisation. It had redeemed mankind from centuries of superstition. The new physics …this cherished certainty’. Faber Book of Science, 2005

The Genome is but deeper, nearer

The Genome is but deeper, nearer -

its magnificence and art, more clues

to what might come when senses alter,

change/enhance/still/augment in death;

shrugging of organic weight,

illusion of atomic density -

when all the time, space still saw us

as her child - we were as imaginary

compared to such risible simplicity,

lumps of plastic accident, stranded

on a special star picked at random

from any Universe possible; solid

as stones under light, such beautiful

illusion - skin, eyes - hair and corn

under summer sun; feel of a pebble

returned from the sea, unripe plum -

except when the energy suddenly shudders,

unexpectedly the dance beneath is revealed;

we’ve all seen it, a moment trembling,

shimmering distinctly with the nature

of underneath, within; communal energy

where we exist, which we are - somehow

authored, drawn by life; only focused here -

like an incredible dream the world had once.

‘We are the children of chaos, and the deep structure of change is decay. At root, there is only corruption, and the unstemmable tide of chaos. Gone is purpose; all that is left is direction. This is the bleakness we have to accept as we peer dispassionately into the heart of the Universe.’ Peter Atkins, The Second Law, 1984

‘Cheer up, Peter! Not direction but dance.’ Gillian Ferguson, Poet

‘Following the formulation of the laws of mechanics by Isaac Newton in the 17th century, scientists became accustomed to thinking of the universe as a gigantic mechanism.’ Paul Davies, New Scientist Guide to Chaos, Penguin , 1991

Surely as certainty changes,/ As tide moves sand,/ As heat sends wind to force the sea into waves,/ As water rises and returns in rain/ Or circles into smoke and falls in vapor,/ You are enchanted for you enter change/ And change is holy.// I pray to Proteus, the god of change/ And proteolysis, ‘the end of change/ Changing in the end’/ To break old images and make you new/ As love is its own effect unendingly.’ Surely as Certainty Changes, Grace Shulman

‘On the other side of a mirror there’s an inverse world, where the insane go sane; where bones climb out of the earth and recede to the first slime of love.’ Anti-matter, Russell Edson

‘GOD THE FIRST CAUSE!- in this terrene abode/ Young Nature lisps, 2 she is the child of GOD./ From embryon births her changeful forms improve,/ Grow, as they live, and strengthen as they move…’ 2. The perpetual production and increase of the strata of limestone from the shells of aquatic animals: and of all those incumbent on them from the recrements of vegetables and of terrestrial animals, are now well understood from our improved knowledge of geology; and show, that the solid parts of the globe are gradually enlarging, and consequently that it is young; as the fluid parts are not yet all converted into solid ones. Add to this, that some parts of the earth and its inhabitants appear younger than others; thus the greater height of the mountains of America seems to show that continent to be less ancient than Europe, Asia, and Africa; as their summits have been less washed away, and the wild animals of America, as the tigers and crocodiles, are said to be less perfect in respect to their size and strength; which would show them to be still in a state of infancy, or of progressive improvement. Lastly, the progress of mankind in arts and sciences, which continues slowly to extend, and to increase, seems to evince the youth of human society; whilst the unchanging states of the societies of some insects, as of the bee, wasp, and ant, which is usually ascribed to instinct, seems to evince the longer existence, and greater maturity of those societies…[Darwin’s note]’ Erasmus Darwin, 1731-1802, The Temple of Nature

What laws may be discovered that will make us wonder less -

what maintenance of chance, chaos, for the greater creativity;

what complexity, pattern, spectacular order, re-issuing of genes,

could but impress us more. Breathtaking normality is enough -

Nature is not diminished, but grows beneath the glass of science,

her electron microscopes, telescopes - creating hothouses for us

to better understand such schemes; and dream how they have come

to be, discover what they mean - as their lights trail off to darkness.

‘The Centre of our world’s the lively light/ Of the warm sunne, the visible Deity/ Of this externall temple…’ Henry More, 1614-87, The Infinity of Worlds

‘For me, Gaia is a religious as well as a scientific concept, and in both spheres it is manageable…God and Gaia, theology and science, even physics and biology are not separate but a single way of thought.’ James Lovelock, The Ages of Gaia

‘Between the beginning, the first step,/ and infinite, breathing worlds,/ these things gather together:// a number small as the average family;// the eye of a mountain quail;// a scale that will never balance,/ its needle drifting endlessly/ to nearer and farther extremes;/ the center of the universe;// a boy’s pocket, filled with stories;// our pencils attempting these ellipses/ with elusive focal points – coral polyp,/ quasar/ treble clef,/ rose.’ Carol Jane Bangs, The Poet Studies Physics

‘...Child of the sky, ancestor of the sky, the mind/ Has been obligated from the beginning/ To create an ordered universe/ As the only possible proof/ Of its own inheritence.’ Pattian Rogers, The Origin of Order

‘Mind & Eye are a logarithm-/ mic spiral coiled from periphery. This is called a ‘spiral sweep’ – a biological form which combines (as do galaxies) economy with/ beauty.’ Ronald Johnson, Beam 4

Aesthetic echoes

Combining principles - aesthetic echoes

rippling through energy, matter; organic

and intellectual art bringing the mind back

to the original aesthetic, realisation - pure

knowledge poulticed from the Universe;

perceived in the enormous orderly - and

chaotic guddle necessary for life, a creative

development, freedom; what linked beauties

conceived in the replicated spirals of shell,

fingertip, galaxy, maze, Celtic art; symbol

of simultaneous movement inward and outward,

unending energy - self propulsion from original

spark; Big Bang scale reverberating, drawing

these communal pictures to unite such space -

colossal energy; as in the management of the body,

something you can get hold of - forget its miracles

in the anaesthetic of the everyday. Yet - these days,

it doesn’t take much, as ongoing mother, to witness

the sustained miracle of Earth happening -

slow creation of my child from the garden;

replication and adaptation of original script -

exhibiting the same aesthetic in DNA spirals.

‘How I hate the man who talks about the ‘brute creation’, with an ugly emphasis on brute. Only Christians are capable of it. As for me, I am proud of my close kinship with other animals…I take pride in my Simian ancestry. I like to think I was once a magnificent hairy fellow living in the trees and that my frame has come down through geological time via sea-jelly and worms and Amphibians, Fish, Dinosaurs, and Apes. Who would exchange these for the pallid couple in the Garden of Eden.’ Bruce Frederick Cummings, 1889-1919, Naturalist, Journal of a Disappointed Man

Slow Creation

What’s wrong, after all, with the notion of ‘Slow Creation’-

in a universe of miracles, does the great story of the garden

have to be untranslated by any application of imagination,

symbolism – isn’t it enough that the Universe itself might

have been created in a few minutes flat; our minutes,

who knows - that’s the point - in whose timekeeping

the Universe was born - who had their watch out

as Adam and Eve came burning up from the dust;

what we might symbolically, poetically, label Day

and Night, call a week, might vary even in a poem,

a human poem, so why not the Poem of Genesis -

supported by science, Evolution as a longer story

an oral storyteller might have written down after

long millennia, to explain, illuminate. After all -

the creation of life is a blink in the history of time;

but a week in the years of time to the human mind,

explaining mystery to itself,

as phenomenal as Big Bang.

‘The god of galaxies – hw shall we praise him?/…what word/ Of words? And where to send it, on which night/ Of winter stars, of summer, or by autumn/ In the first evening of the Pleiades? The god of galaxies, of burning gases,/ May have forgotten Leo and the Bull.// But God remembers, and is everywhere./ He even is the void, where nothing shines, he is the place/ Prepared fro hugest planets: black idea,/ Brodding between fierce poles he keeps apart….- oh, what word/ Of words? Let us consider it in terror./ And say it without voice. Praise universes/ Numberless. Praise all of them. Praise Him.’ Mark Van Doren, 1894-1972, The God of Galaxies

The power, which evolved this idea of BEING, BEING in its essence, BEING limitless, comprehending its own limits in its dilatation, and condensing itself into its own apparent mounds - how shall we name it? The idea itself, which like a mighty billow at once overwhelms and bears aloft - what is it? Whence did it come? In vain would we derive it from the organs of sense: for these supply only surfaces, undulations, phantoms! In vain from the instruments of sensation: for these furnish only the chaos, the shapeless elements of sense! And least of all may we hope to find its origin, or sufficient cause, in the moulds and mechanism of the UNDERSTANDING, the whole purport and functions of which consists in individualization, in outlines and differencings by quantity, quality and relation. It were wiser to seek substance in shadow, than absolute fulness in mere negation…We have asked then for its birth-place in all that constitutes our relative individuality, in all that each man calls exclusively himself. It is an alien of which they know not: and for them the question itself is purposeless, and the very words that convey it are as sounds in an unknown language, or as the vision of heaven and earth expanded by the rising sun, which falls but as warmth on the eye-lids of the blind. To no class of phenomena or particulars can it be referred, itself being none: therefore, to no faculty by which these alone are apprehended. As little dare we refer it to any form of abstraction or generalization: for it has neither co-ordinate or analogon! It is absolutely one, and that it IS, and affirms itself TO BE, is its only predicate. And yet this power, nevertheless, is! In eminence of Being it IS! And he for whom it manifests itself in its adequate idea, dare as little arrogate it to himself as his own, can as little appropriate it either totally or by partition, as he can claim ownership in the breathing air, or make an enclosure in the cope of heaven. He bears witness of it to his own mind, even as he describes life and light: and, with the silence of light, it describes itself and dwells in us only as far as we dwell in it. The truths, which it manifests are such as it alone can manifest, and in all truth it manifests itself.’ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

God is shorthand for the hands of time

God is shorthand for the hands of time -

moulding the chemical plasticine of life;

creative force, fever in first earth,

drawing man from belly of worm,

where genes pattern the present,

holding a physical illusion solid

to the creatures, opening flowers,

comfortably caught in dimension;

flies in sticky amber, focus of life,

central arena of the organic force -

spectacular realised moment,

to details of butterfly scales -

writing of love in a human eye.

Past and future as bright wings

spread, right and left to His view;

present never static, flying space,

this unfolding Universe, star spiral,

held in the hand of original energy,

bending time to comprehension -

to allow being, existence like this,

warm and bloody, cruciform brain

sparkling with intelligence, care -

inhabiting strung moments, aware

enough of other times to function

marvellously, skilfully, erudite;

accessing the correct memories,

storing enough facts from time

to produce this fantastic story

of life, passage of time marked

by the heart; each beat counted.

Time is not a concrete concept -

like God, is capable of qualities

undreamt as yet, unseen, untouched

by hand, analysis, imagination even;

where there is no capacity

for understanding, things

cannot be understood, unveiled -

as the Genome slumbered under

glorious surface product

these four billion years -

a cluster of chemical miracles

strung by the hand of Evoution,

whose working of time is so patient -

whose slow art embroiders the present,

artfully working the continuous seams

with invisible mending; in bone, blood.

Did God know the poem of the world

Did God know the poem of the world

would look like this one day - Friday,

Twenty First Century, November -

furry, straight-from-fairyland frost;

I’m not kidding, the whole bright world is sparkling!

Even cars, milk cartons, postboxes, spilled rubbish -

that mouldy carrot in the gutter has a brilliant green star

twinkling at the top! Tea-bags are Mercury’s envelopes;

stiff park grass wears a polar bear rug - each white hair,

tipped with hairy ice; trees’ zebra shadows imprisoning

the glittering path. Air streaming through my open window

visibly shimmers, is a fanciful Tinkerbell presence dancing;

flowers wear little-girly sparkling tutus -

any minute Jack Frost, the Snow Queen,

will be seen in the garden - birch wands

waving over Chinese Lantern skeletons,

lighting their doll-sized orange lamps,

for tonight will be a party, celebration

of the cold beauties of ice, sun-in-winter;

how fabulous the jewels will be - ancient

dowagers will come down from Scotland’s glens

in their hardest cut, most magnificent diamonds -

God will light the very furthest speckle stars -

polish Venus, Mercury; set a snow-blue Moon

in the breathing black hall - his holy dome -

where the mouth of space mists shining dark

with possibility; fresh moisture forming

on star seeds, earth crystals - glistening

eyes of a man who will one day read

this frozen day and night, celebration

of the trembling present; now caught straight

from the writing hand of a master - a magical

realist - original author, perfecting a script;

Sun-poem of the Frosted Morning, reciting.

‘…I don’t mind being such a micro-organism – to me the honour is sufficient of belonging to the universe, so grand a scheme of things. Not even Death can rob me of that honour. For nothing can alter the fact that I have lived…And when I am dead, the matter which composes me body is indestructible – and eternal, so that come what may to my ‘Soul’, my dust will always be going on, each separate atom of me playing its separate part…’ WNP Barbellion, Naturalist, 22 December, 1912, Journal of a Disappointed Man, Chatto & Windus, 1919 

‘…in tracing back the history of matter, Science is arrested when she assures herself, on the one hand, that no molecule has been made, and, on the other, that it has not been made by any of the processes we call natural.’ James Clerk Maxwell, Scientist, Discourse on Molecules, 1873 

Maybe this is the resurrection of the body

Maybe this is the resurrection of the body,

not the recomposition of mouldered flesh;

rickle of scaffold bones collapsed - helmet

of protective skull crumbling back to earth;

but our molecules, which were there

at the beginning, as original to God -

the Universe - manipulated through all

things; indestructible, infinitely plastic,

ultimate materials of art for the tools

of life, never ever tiring of existence,

creating new means and beings -

from dust of fallen yellow leaves,

a mouse’s whisker, swan’s wing,

light-smeared glass of blue eyes;

perpetual replenishment, realisation

from calling of genes to chemistry -

necessary elements, endless process

until death of Earth; atom-dancing -

organic memory which is the genome,

pattern enough to form again, anyone

from molecules; where breath of life

is come again among that darkness -  

from the making of the Universe, root

of all life, sparking DNA will be easy.

‘The solar system is vast, incomprehensible to most of us, and staggering in its distances, and to mention it in the same breath as our three pounds of brain is apparently to relate like with unlike, a thing colossal with a thing minute. But the bracketing together is fairer than might be imagined.The dimensions astronomers talk about, and seem to understand, have their parallel in the numbers neuroanatomists relate, almost in passing, as if these too are understood…. Fifteen billion nerve cells…is also the numeric total (more or less) of stars in our galaxy…the figure of possible connections within our modern brain is as good as infinite. It is certainly larger than the number of atoms presumed to exist in the entire universe…somehow or other a bipedal, fairly hairless, hunting, scavening ape did acquire this incredible posession and then handed it on to us. Why it did no-one knows, or can even surmize.’ Antony Smith, The Mind, Hodder & Stoughton, 1984

‘Let/ there be/ amino acids,/ and there were: a slop/ of molecules in ancient seas,/ building cell walls…lumping into clusters…worms, medusae, trilobites, lobe-finned fish dragging onto/ land becoming thrinaxodon, protoceratops…dying out/..mammals evolving from shrew-like deltatheridium into hyendadon, eohippus,/ mammoth, saber-tooth, dire wolf, australopithecus rising on two feet, homo erectus…you.’ Charles Harper Webb, Descent

‘In Man’s Place in the Universe(1903) [Alfred Russel Wallace, co-founder with Darwin of the theory of Evolution] argued that, since only a small difference in the structure of the universe would have prevented organic life from developing, it proves that the universe was designed by an intelligent being with the purpose of generating organic life, ‘culiminating in man’.’ Faber Book of Science

‘Abraham was left in no doubt that the future lay with his seed not his individuality. God knew his Darwinism.’ Richard Dawkins, Unweaving the Rainbow, Penguin, 1998

Ingredient and circumstance of the Universe

Ingredient and circumstance of the Universe

lead us precisely here to this leaf - bleeding

a little at the neck; its identity even informing

this clear blood smear - which if we could see

would lead us back through every green thing

that ever sprang, to our communal ancestors -

ultimately to the Big Bang, principle of creativity

that sprouted in that darkness - invention of light.

The planet trembles, Earth wet and fresh in space;

knowing some slight tilting of her axis - nothing.

Not this leaf, nor the hand holding, or child at school,

unwound on similar silver strings, binding us to God;

of no material known, construct of love - passion.

No gold sky pinking, blushing water, slow theatre

of light; no lizardly sitting under sun, smiling.

One unnerving shudder - the system tumbles.

One stop, an unbroken chain is parted, unlinked,

which cannot be - or a new begining is required.

Loss of energy, catastrophic; driving power,

spark run down - so love is limitless, eternal.

Animals, plants too

If man is made in God’s image,

then all animals, plants, are too,

on our communal root, journey;

just as we can look like this,

but genetically still contain

tail, scale, fur, horns, wings.

‘The Universe is lavish beyond imagining.’ Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan, Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, 1992

‘And for all this, nature is never spent;/ There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;/ And though the last lights off the black West went/ Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs - / Because the Holy Ghost over the bent/ World/ Broods with warm breast and with ah! Bright wings.’ God’s Grandeur, Gerard Manley Hopkins

‘Activists unfurled a banner from the famous Christ statue in Rio de Janeiro to call on governments to protect global biodiversity. Greenpeace activists hung a huge banner on the hand of the famous statue of Christ, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, today which read ‘The future of the planet is in your hands’ to demand that governments act to protect life on Earth and ensure a safer future for the planet. The message was addressed to representatives of 188 governments that are meeting in Brazil to discuss the protection of global biodiversity.’ Greenpeace, 2006

‘Leafy-with-love banks and the green waters of the canal/ Pouring redemption for me, that I do/ The will of God, wallow in the habitual, the banal,/ grow with nature again as before I grew…O unworn world enrapture me, encapture me in a web/ Of fabulous grass and eternal voices by a beech,/ Feed the gaping need of my senses, give me ad lib/ to pray unselfconsciously with overflowing speech/ for this soul needs to be honoured with a new dress woven/ From green and blue things and arguments that cannot be proven.’ Canal Bank Walk, Patrick Kavanagh

‘Dear, I know nothing of/ Either, but when I try to imagine a faultless love/ Or the life to come, what I hear is the murmur/ Of underground streams, what I see is a limestone landscape.’ In Praise of Limstone, WH Auden

Genes hold the Garden of Eden together

Genes hold the Garden of Eden together -

pulling it from possibility into the present;

glueing the story from nothing, space,

light, to water and earth, first genome;

creation of DNA linking forward,

rising from an unearthly darkness,

tumbling RNA; spirals unfurling

the organic flags of green, flesh -

as one movement, named Evolution;

uncoiling from one moment of grace,

one touch of love among volatile heavens -

from Eden came this lily in my hand, white

as the day she could luxuriously be called,

‘Lily’, in the shifting principles of names -

their coagulation out of oneness, union,

while still preserving shared originality,

unity. As our name will one day be called

from the garden, our name which is Adam

and Eve still, under our flesh tattoo;

our genes remembering the Garden,

under every tree, all landscape, lying

on grass, swimming seas and rivers -

genes carrying the spores of existence;

magical root of DNA - called Genesis.

God is the Lordly Tree

God is the lordly tree,

feverish bluebell rash;

addict bee focused

in a wingless halo,

turning the desperate love of flowers

into honey stolen to sweeten our lips.

He is lush stone, moss-touped,

being a true sculpture of itself -

even life will make some garden of a rock,

with her most ascetic flower - poor lichen,

whose lamentable bloom hurts the heart -

like slave song wrung from hard existence.

God is squabbling balls of small exploding bird,

flying from Him like sparks from burning wood;

particular frantic atoms in a pink chaffinch word.

He has forged himself a triumphal Golden Eagle,

keening copper monument to the invention of air -

cast in intense blue, the wild gold angel-bird wing;

guttural gorse stuttering into tough flames - star-

spiked against hooved mauraders of scarce green.

God is mother and child, curled like sofa cats;

knowing skin as elements, molecules, energy -

what it is to be more than one,

with love a pearl in the heart.

‘Nature is Imagination.’ William Blake, 1757-1827

GOD IS GREEN

On this first true summer day,

a simple song formed - whole

in my heart. Kept singing,

like an insistent dawn bird

you cannot control or silence,

being tuned to original music;

one little song deciphered -

some small lyric composed,

like a thought that is a hymn -

rhyme to something unknown,

but important; only thus approachable,

vaguely, but fundamentally graspable -

as a whole poem drifts down sometimes

like a mysterious leaf falling – is caught,

or flashes, zap - already written,

it seems, in the possible volume,

which has overlapped this time -

as sound travels molecules, light.

It went:

‘GOD IS GREEN

GOD IS GREEN

GOD IS GREEN’

Hallelujah, Praise the Lord -

for the principle of the tiger!

Fur-flame, snow-bear, hummingbird;

beetle, toadstool, lily, salmon, mouse.

For web geometry -

hammerhead shark;

slow muscle of the flower,

closing in warm dark gaze

of evening, burying her gold

for the departed bee, his love

and honey currency; blind moths

crashing their horns into light –

as Gothic night interpretation

of lucky sunshine butterflies -

comparing the colour crucibles

to murky working of dull mud;

but sleight of hand, in wings hinged 

on a similar crawly creature remnant.

Praise the Lord for each tree,

breathing - making oxygen -

for every last animal and seed,

on a colossal harmonious scale;

in the blazing of this day -

light that drives molecules,

solar power and root love,

has burst right out through

enthusiastic life, seasonal excitement;

seams of beauty bursting – spilling a

shining principle, living symbolism,

as Mercury is metal still but liquid –

first energy of the aesthetic Universe,

firing evolving Earth; seen, revealed -

through every growing thing, transparent;

everything pictured by Summer because -

God is Green! 

God is Green!

And the music for my song was the voice

of the river, wind among reeds - the same

high notes heard by intoxicated swallows;