RodMer Poem Package C Old Pagoda and Other Science Poems [26 poems, 860 lines]
by Rod Anderson	for on-line reading now in your browser

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All material is copyright. Some of the poems and stories in these packages have appeared in literary journals, anthologies, and in Sky Falling Sunny Tomorrow by Rod Anderson (published by Wolsak & Wynn, Toronto, 1989). Where the rights involved were other than first serial rights, we are grateful to the respective publishers (and particularly Wolsak & Wynn) for permission to offer this material on the Web

"Universe" is the one serious poem among the next few science poems (not that there aren't some serious innuendoes in the others). I should, perhaps, just comment briefly on the central conceit. Unless you're a lot more erudite than me (OK, I), you may not know the origin of the word "verse". I didn't. The root of the word comes from the Latin vertere (to turn), the same root we see in words like 'convert', 'reverse', 'introvert' (turned inward), etc. From this came the Latin versus meaning a turn of the plough, or a furrow and also meaning a line of writing or verse since such a line was like a furrow across the page. So -- see how poetry has an agricultural origin? (Maybe that's why we live in an old farmhouse). And universus in Latin really does come from 'turned into one'. Hence the connection in this poem between poetry and the cosmos. It was, of course, Pallas Athena who, at her birth, sprang fully armed out of the forehead of Zeus. Rhyme, of course, puns on rime (frost). Poetry often has couplets (though, true, there are none here) -- and physicists talk of coupling constants for the relationships between the four fundamental forces of nature. Metric can be a poetic term (the meter in accentual verse) or a physics term (as in the metric of space-time). But you didn't want to plough through this long furrow, did you? I know -- the poem is supposed to speak for itself.

			they say it's mute
			a shy exotic Beast
			though once a poem exploded from its forehead
			fully armed and wise --
			a single outer rhyme
			coupled invisibly through space
			frosting the horny inner spirals --
			the self-veering of its curved unstanza'd metric
			unity turning seamless on itself
			moebius-like
			pointing

			each morning down to the sea to drink
			it walks they say on point-like silver feet
			sings voicelessly its clear-eyed single-verse
			points, then hides all day
			embarrassed to explain,
			appears again each night
			silent
			jewelled
			drawing a gilded hearse

			which from inside
			we cannot see
			anyway it's only (you know) a myth
			there is no Uni-turn I'm sure
			and if there were
			I doubt it would be here

"Basic Black Hole" is fairly self-explanatory (at least the beginning epigram hopefully explains things). Ever since the Einstein equations pointed to the possibility of 'singularities', physicists (and even lay people -- witness the popularity of Stephen Hawking's books) have been fascinated by black holes. Our universe began and probably will end in a singularity. Somewhere, she's out there waiting for us.

							Current theory suggests it is possible 
							to travel through a rotating black hole 
							and arrive in a different universe. 
							Matter entering a static black hole,
							on the other hand, simply disappears 
							-- adding to the hole's mass. Black 
							holes swallow up light as well -- and
							so are invisible. All galaxies may 
							some day be consumed by black holes.


				my exotic cousins
				twirl about
				black tassels everywhere
				look how their breasts rotate
				God, what a cheap trick!
				people come from miles around
				spin down their funnels
				into other worlds
				never come back
				ha ha my cousins laugh
				it tickles

				me 
				I just sit here
				invisible lump
				no way I stoop to twist
				I keep my dress down over my knees
				don't ask me to dance
				I'll gobble you up
				anyway you won't
				I've learned to live alone
				sit in my basic black
				gradually get heavier
				I can wait

..........................................Copyright © Rod Anderson 1987

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"Math Table Talk" (and the next one, "Rose and Fred") are both, I guess, about people who can become obsessed with an idea (ideas are exciting) and temporarily lose contact with people around them, even those they love. I plead guilty to such attacks from time to time. If you're free of this disease, congratulations -- you're better balanced than me. But I'm trying to learn. Anyway, in "Math Table Talk" you should probably know that the "golden section" is that division of a line that makes the ratio of the smaller segment to the larger segment equal to the ratio of the larger segment to the whole. If you draw a perfect pentagon and then extend all the sides outwards until they meet at points, a five-pointed star will appear, the so-called pentacle of Pythagorus. Note that every line is intersected in 2 places. Each of these intersections is a "golden section" of the line. Hence, the pentacle came to be a mystical symbol for the Pythagoreans. (Alternatively, you can start with a perfect pentagon and then connect every possible diagonal -- you'll get a pentacle inscribed within your original pentagon). The 'golden lads' reference is to the song in Shakespeare's Cymbeline: "Golden lads and girls all must,/ As chimney-sweepers, come to dust." -- though in "Math Table Talk" the 'come' has an alternate meaning, of course. The phrase 'upon a golden bed' comes from Yeats' "What were all the world's alarms/ To mighty Paris when he found/ Sleep upon a golden bed/ That first dawn in Helen's arms?". Finally, the fibonacci series is the series 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13 ... where every term consists of the sum of the two preceding terms and the ratio between successive terms gradually (as you climb up the series) converges on (what do you know) the golden section ratio of 1.618.... OK, OK -- you don't have to get every reference (there are no prizes). The English grads may miss fibonacci and me and the geeks may miss Yeats -- but who's counting? The rest of the word play is pretty self-evident.

			Talking of tarot and pentacles he starts
			explaining the golden section, draws
			table-cloth pentagons
			inserts their diagonals (star-crossed)
			leans forward, narrows his tentacles
			touches on Euclid, clasps the Pythagoreans.

			At first she turns, smiles (these Greeks!)
			thinking he'd said 'golden sex'
			which of course 
			would have been better.

			How did they do it? she wonders,
			keep the gilt-licked sheen from cracking off those
			sensuous Phidian thighs, those fatted golden calves?
			Bending ever so slowly? Is that
			the secret?
			And in her head, a moistened gilder's brush
			sweeps softly back and forth
			while golden lads and girls all come
			to dust in slow motion.

			Or was the transmuted moment his mean?
			(golden, of course)
			sex as a mystic halo, the aura vitae,
			time Hellenized 'upon a golden bed',
			the moment eternal, consummate,
			not pestled to gilded plaster by Paris
			but fountaining wisdom, youth.

			But in that case, why all these diagrams?
			these five-armed Shivas?
			Not Greek at all!
			A more ancient symmetry perhaps,
			an old position from the Kama Sutra:
			limbs/lingam splayed four-and-one in
			exploding stars,
			the five-fold way,
			But where exactly do  we fold?

			She stops --
			he's onto the five Platonic solids --
			just geometry after all! --
			metric of unerotic earth.
			She turns away bored
			won't ever know now what
			she'd thought he had in mind.


			And he,
			he clambers on,
			unconsummately skilled,
			splaying out all his cards
			leaping from Parthenon to cusps to magic squares,
			now off to fibonacci numbers.
			Watch him breathe heavily, each breath
			the sum of the two preceding!

.......................................Copyright © Rod Anderson 1986

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"Rose and Fred" is pretty straightforward. With relativity these days we are used to thinking of the passage of time (how fast your clock runs) as being relative. What is not always as well known is that the concept of simultaneity is also relative. Whether two events occur simultaneously or whether one precedes the other and, if so, which is the earlier) are all relative measurements about which different observers -- traveling at relativistic speeds (relative to each other) -- will differ. But really, as I said in an earlier comment, it's about obsession with ideas.

		Rose didn't actually travel backward in time
		just forward more slowly than the rest of us
		we thought she was inattentive or purposely mute
		"Where did you leave the paper?" we'd shout

		Rose never answered
		later the paper appeared on the coffee table
		the fact is she'd slipped three minutes a day
		she did answer but it seems

		our ears had moved upstream
		couldn't hear her words
		"Hey," said Fred, the thinker, Monday last, "I've got it"
		and turned on the tape recorder

		"Now Rose," he questioned his lagging wife
		"how come you're so goddamn quiet?"
		again she didn't answer
		but later when Fred played back the tape

		there was her voice 
		preceding his question exactly three minutes
		"Fuck off!"
		"See?" cried Fred happily, "It works!"

......................................Copyright © Rod Anderson 1987

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"Space Probe" is just a jazzing about. You can pronounce Ivan with the accent on the first syllable or the second syllable, whichever you prefer. He won't mind, as long as you give him lots of good vodka.

		In 1998 Explorer XII with its small crew
		rockets past Pluto, through the netherworld of comets
		exits the solar system, bound for Vega
		humans' first voyage into true space

		But one light-year out, bam! they run into a black wall
		the jolt snaps off three antennas
		the damaged fourth beams back an SOS:
		"Trajectory blocked by bloody black wall in space;
		what the hell do we do now?"

		Long before the answer comes back, however
		Explorer has sniffed along the mysterious black wall
		its fish-nose pressed to the glassy surface
		measuring an almost imperceptible concavity

		A second message zings earthwards
		due for answer in 1999;
		"Well goddam!, it's not just a wall;
		it's a sphere -- and we're on the inside
		-- we and the whole bloody solar system!"

		Explorer's one antenna stretches out
		pokes at the constellations
		glowing like laser spots on the sphere's polished surface;
		a retractable arm scoops a sample
		"Well, I'll be damned!" cries Captain Ivan
		"They're bloody painted on!"

		But a week later comes the big discovery: a door,
		a door, a shimmering black magnetic door
		emitting neutrinos like crazy,
		"There's a door on this bloody black sphere!"

		The third return message from earth
		("For godsake, don't open it!")
		never reaches them

		Captain Ivan has already pointed Explorer's nose
		bang on the bright orange door-handle
		now fires all his booster rockets at once
		and the door nudges open a crack
		shazam! an intense blue light floods out
		lights up the entire solar system
		as if it were high noon

		Back on earth all the bedrooms, boardrooms,
		schoolrooms, and officerooms
		are suffused in this euphoric blue
		people don't know what to say to each other

		Meanwhile Ivan, in his cosmic-ray-repellent wetsuit
		floats up to the door-slit
		pokes his head tentatively through and gawks --
		"Surprise!" everyone shouts, "Happy birthday, Ivan!"
		candles, laughter, flushed faces, and vodka

		Ivan yanks his head out quick
		kicks the door shut
		the solar system goes black again
		"Oh shit" says Ivan
		"For a minute I thought
		we were on to something"

...................................Copyright © Rod Anderson 1987

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"The Hunting of the Quark" is one of those puzzles poets set for themselves. I mention this only for net-surfers who are not English grads (heaven knows, a world of only English grads would be insufferable!). A sestina consists of six iambic pentameter stanzas of six lines each stanza's lines ending with the same six rhymes. But each stanza must arrange the preceding stanza's rhymes A,B,C,D,E,F into a new permutation F,A,E,B,D,C. Mathematicians among you will realize that after six stanzas of such permutations the next stanza would come back to the opening pattern. But instead, the final seventh stanza uses the opening pattern six rhymes with the B,D,F at the line-ends and the A,C,E internally. OK? Who would want to do that, you ask? The quark stuff is fairly clear, I hope, from the epigram. It annoys me that the current North American pronunciation is to make "quark" sound like "quart" (as in milk) when clearly the original in Finnegan's Wake was meant to rhyme with ark, bark, and Mark. The up, down, and sideways are not Kama Sutra positions but flavours of the original three quarks (sometimes also called up, down, and strange). Bottom and top are sometimes also called beauty and truth. Modern physicists are a whimsical lot. The 'dreaming' Bottom is a reference to Bottom in Midsummer Night's Dream . Well, yes it is mostly jazzing around -- but I guess the question at the end is whether there are certain things which are improper for humans to seek (eating the apple from the Tree of Knowledge). Personally, I'm on the side of eating the apple, but I do confess to moments of dread -- of which this ending is the nightmare version. Since I wrote this poem in 1985 I have seen a popular science book with the same title (can't remember the author). But, hey, punning on Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark is a pretty obvious pun, and probably lots of folks have thought of it.

Enough already. I wouldn't burden listeners with such long-winded commentary at a reading. But the advantage of the printed page (oops -- I meant these visual pages seen in comfortable Geneva 12 font in Netscape) is that you can skim it, come back to it, study it, or ignore it at your option. Empowerment to the reader!

						Fundamental particles such as protons and
						neutrons are thought to be made up of even
						more fundamental particles called quarks.
						Physicists originally thought quarks came
						in only three 'flavours' ('up', 'down',  and 
						'sideways'), but recently have discovered 
						'charm' and 'bottom' and postulate the
						existence of 'top'. Although a proton is
						made up of three quarks, it is believed
						impossible in principle to isolate any one
						of the latter from its proton container.

		When no more scientific names were left
		We wakened Finnegan's "Three . . . for Muster Mark."
		As, coming too in threes ('Side', 'Down', and 'Up'),
		It seemed to fit its Joycean name: the quark.
		Yet so elusive, shy, minute and light,
		How find this whimsy? We were in the dark.

		But, rational beings feared the void of dark, 
		And so we hunted up, down, right and left,
		Yet couldn't flush our quarry to the light,
		Though we were quick the telltale clues to mark
		As, huddled in its hadron-bag, the quark
		Cavorted with its brothers, bundled up.

		Three? No. We had to round the number up.
		How many more were lurking in the dark?
		New cyclotrons revealed five kinds of quark.
		On, 'Charm'! On, dreaming 'Bottom'! Who was left?
		And doubly wide its name fell from the mark
		When five formed roost for flying 'Top' to light!

		Now they were six! We could not now make light
		Of the perplexities which troubled up.
		Intended as the simplifying mark
		Of Occam's Razor slicing through the dark,
		The particle had splintered right and left.
		Inscrutable, O Hexagram of Quark!

		Dismay! Hints of components to the quark!
		Smaller than even spry photons of light.
		We humans argued, Hawks, Doves, Gays, New Left,
		How many billions should we now put up
		To blast away the bean-bag cloak of dark
		Hiding the secret drink of Muster Mark?


		We'd make this quirky particle toe the mark!
		For who was boss? Who, confidential quark?
		Inside its spunky bag: perhaps the dark
		Recess to strange, charmed powers which could light
		The way to Babel-stars, the big step up!
		And blast enough was all that now was left.

		One day we humans left our final mark. 
		Blew up eternity inside that quark,
		Light waves collapsed. God shrieked. Then there was dark.

........................................Copyright © Rod Anderson 1985

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Since the next seven poems are all about science (in part) maybe I should say a few words about this odd-couple mixture (poetry and science). Coleridge said: "poetry is opposed to science" and Lowes Dickinson: "when science arrives, it expels literature". Are they right? I don't think so. And I think it's unfortunate if we have to divide the world into hard (and insensitive) scientists and sensitive (but fuzzy-thinking) artists. Both these stereotypes are wrong. We live in an age of science -- of quarks, black holes, the big bang theory, and super strings. Must these be out of bounds for poets? And is poetry out of bounds for scientists? Well the name 'quark' comes form James Joyce's Finnegan's Wake. Maybe the wall is coming down. Me, I have always been an avid science addict (having thought, at one time, when I graduated in Chemistry, that I'd actually pursue a career in science -- which for rather trivial and accidental reasons I did not). But I still devour science books and each month's issue of Scientific American. And you? You perhaps have an openness to both poetry and science too -- or you wouldn't be reading these pages from the Internet.

Some people find meditation the right way to seek spiritual values; others prefer philosophy; others would use another word than spiritual. Doesn't matter. There's no one right answer. All paths climb to the top of mountain. I prefer science. To me the questions posed along the path of science come in a form which inspires awe more immediately than do those along other paths. This is a matter of personal taste and there are no right or wrong answers. But this is mine.

Consider the matter of space and time (the subject addressed in "The Reality Game" later in Section III). We are used to defining reality against a backdrop of space and time. If a house occupies real space and lasts over real time, then we say that the house is real (as opposed to being a fictional house -- say, Wuthering Heights or the House at Pooh Corner). That is, the house is real if you can situate it in the real framework of space and time. And why is that framework itself real? Well, that's a given. At least with respect to the house in question.

But when we come to the universe, we find that there is no background framework of real space and real time in which the universe exists. Rather, space and time are creations of the universe, created at the Big Bang. There is no sense in asking what is outside the universe, for outside is a spatial term. There's no sense asking what happened before the Big Bang, for before is a temporal term. And things spatial and temporal (and space and time themselves) are creatures of this universe.

Now comes the question: then how do we decide if the universe is real or not? Not by appealing to an external framework, for there is none. Not by appealing to the universe as a witness, for it is obviously biased in its own defence. Then how? It is such questions (or koans) that seem to me to lead most quickly to a sort of Zen state of being stuck -- the state which inspires a sense of awe at the imponderability of our situation.

This is some of what I was trying to address in "Old Pagoda". Now, years after this poem was published, I have set it to music (with the spoken voice being a voice-over). It's not yet in my Concert Hall as a WAV file, but it is available (my voice against computer-played MIDI) on cassette.

					The universe was not created IN space and time; 
					space and time are PART of the created universe.
											Paul Davies

		far away in a distant land under a banyan tree
		lived the real universe
		I mean it was really there
		wherever there was and no fooling
		and nothing else was there
		because it filled up everything
		oh maybe a peacock
					   or a golden pheasant
		scratched nearby
		but not right at that spot
		where only the gilded galaxies spun
		and had for billions of years
		ever since -- look who cares? -- the point is
		it lasted a long long time
		and took up a lot of space
		and that's what I mean by real

		this makes the universe laugh
		for it knows it was purely imaginary
		made up its own space and time
		then pulled itself into them
		let there be bootstraps
		and who was to argue?
		the peacock and golden pheasant scratching nearby?
		they weren't even recognized
		I mean everyone knows the universe is an old solipsist
		thinks nothing else exists --
		more subtle still, existence:
		an imaginary condition the universe dreamed up
		to fit its own case

		but dreams seed their own destruction
		one day the universe fell asleep
		and the instant its self-thinking stopped
		why, its grasp gave way
		space turned grainy     time crumbled into shards
		and slumbering under the sacred aerial roots
		the universe vanished and was never seen again

		the peacock and the golden pheasant
		scratch for seeds under the banyan tree
		they imagine nothing
		maybe the ruins of an old pagoda
		one gilded finial gathering dust
		nothing else

..............................Copyright © Rod Anderson 1988

Published in Sky Falling Sunny Tomorrow, Toronto: Wolsak & Wynn, 1989
Also published in More Garden Varieties, Toronto: The League of Canadian Poets, 1989

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The second poem, "Angry Astronomers Report Loss", has a slightly different genesis. I'm always amazed at how unpopular science is among some of my friends -- and depressed at my own inability to portray any idea of the passion of the scientist. The French mathematician, Henri Poincaré said: "The Scientist does not study nature because it is useful to do so. He studies it because he takes pleasure in it; and he takes pleasure in it because it is beautiful. If nature were not beautiful, it would not be worth knowing and life would not be worth living." The American Nobel Laureate physicist Steven Weinberg says: "the effort to understand the universe is one of the very few things that lifts human life a little above the level of farce, and gives it some of the grace of tragedy." But no, some of my friends consider that science is cold and calculating and utilitarian -- and, like, who cares about all this stuff anyway? In a moment of frustration with my lack of persuasiveness I wrote the poem "Angry Astronomers Report Loss". I should just mention that the beginning image was suggested to me by an exhibit at the Ontario Science Centre in Toronto. A tray of little silver balls is arranged so that when you tip it one way the balls roll down a central channel from which they bifurcate randomly into 2 channels, then 4, 8, 16, and finally 32 by the time they reach the end. As you might expect, more balls end up in the central channels than at the extreme edges. In fact, the heights of the stacked balls in the 32 channels trace out a mathematical curve: the so-called binomial distribution. You create the curve again and again as you tip the tray back and forth -- proving that the laws of probability really do work as advertised. Neat, I thought. But what happens at the Science Centre is that hoards of primary school children come rushing into the room, punch the buttons, pull the levers, kick at exhibits that don't seem to do much, and then, somewhat bored, wander into the next room in search of something more interesting. Well, anyway, that's what prompted the poem.

		She turns the puzzle over;
		and a burst of little numbers showers down,
		square-roots, surds, irrationals,
		collecting in silver trays at the bottom.

		"Look at this!" she laughs, clapping her hands;
		"So what?" he frowns; "we
		did all that in kindergarten --
		or Math 101 -- whatever."

		She shows him again the next day
		but he looks sick at heart
		because he loves her, hates
		this frittering of powers.

		In kindness he takes the puzzle away, 
		consults with her parents, friends;
		they talk her into law school;
		she becomes rational and rich.

		Now he brushes her long black hair,
		says how proud he is of her;
		she knows she's lucky
		to be so loved.

		But when their son comes home from school
		with Umbriel, the third Uranian moon --
		"Look how it rolls!" he whoops, tugging at her hand --
		she bursts absurdly into tears.
		

..................................Copyright © Rod Anderson 1987

Published in Sky Falling Sunny Tomorrow, Toronto: Wolsak & Wynn, 1989

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In the early world, oxygen was a poison, a poisonous by-product of photosynthesis. One species learned how to adapt to this poison -- making a virtue out of necessity -- to breathe it, as it were -- the blue-green bacterium. It is thought that some of these bacteria became trapped in the precursors of our cells -- as mitochondria -- cellular subcomponents without which we couldn't breathe. No one knows how this symbiosis began. Evolution proceeds by fits and starts. But then maybe this poem isn't about science anyway. Perhaps it's about aggression (and whether that occurs as invasion or envelopment). Or perhaps it's about hierarchies. Or loneliness at the top. You decide.

				Biologists think the oxidizing mitochondria inside
				human cells, without which we couldn't breathe, 
				were once independent bacteria, which later entered
				into a symbiotic relationship with our cells' precursors.

			at first i was scared as hell	
			holy shit i'm alone	
			but then i saw others	
			and i mean others! what others!	
			big soft undulating femellicules	
			wow that was the life	
			a sea like warm bathwater	
			full of dipping and diving	
			ocean wiving	
			and me
			just a gay bac on my own	
	
			i had this trick you see	
			i could breathe oxygen	
			used to drive the girls crazy	
			no one else could do it	

			for years i breezed about	
			mac the bac popping his stack	
			look for a weak spot in the membrane	
			make an entrance	
			poke about in the warm insides	
			pant a bit	
			then get the hell out	
			wham bam thank you ma'am	
			i was a very penetrating fella	
	
			then one day she closed up around me	
			hey i called lemme out lemme out
			don't tighten up like that baby	
			i could be stuck for life	
			penile servitude	
			is very painful	
	
			but she just laughed	
			you're so stuck up with your poking	
			stupid as a pizza boasting	
			deep penetration of the throat	

			just a minute i said
			i'm the aggressor here
			the hit-and-run virus
			the catalytic enzyme
			the marine commando germ
			bac the cat burglar
			the humpy hormone 
			master of the fast getaway
			baby you'd better watch out

			you're no aggressor she said
			you're part of me now
			and i ate you for a reason
			now breathe fella breathe
			i'm waiting she said
			not going to hang up

			well there we were i guessed
			stuck together for eternity
			i tried to make the best of it
			really work on our relationship
			look i said you didn't eat me 
			i didn't invade you
			let's just say we got together
			even-steven
			how about it?
			a couple like us
			could rule the world!

			i've got news for you she said
			i'm not in charge
			what? i cried just as
			she and all her neighbours
			dilated
			sucking air into the lungs
			we were a part of
			quick she nudged me
			breathe fella breathe


			then from the skies
			comes this giant voice above
			Holy Shit  I'm Alone!

.........................................Copyright © Rod Anderson 1987

Published in Sky Falling Sunny Tomorrow, Toronto: Wolsak & Wynn, 1989

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"The Free-Trade Universe" is a more light-hearted romp -- which may be how it found its way one day into the pages of the Toronto Sun . This dates back to the days when the question of free-trade was being actively debated throughout Canada. (Yes, I know, it's still being debated.) The reference to games is, in part, homage to the Canadians involved in the birth of Trivial Pursuits.

		if Canadians had designed the universe
		don't laugh, I mean why couldn't they?
		say, a couple of bright teen-agers one week-end at Waterloo
		this crazy idea of a game, just a minute you ask
		what sort of a game? bingo for crowds of Acadians?
		chess gambits for Bay Street?
		a form of strip poker for Gastown?

		look, I'm telling you, these are just kids
		too naive to think of the market
		they just invent this really neat game
		with, you know, stars, planets, galaxies
		a few simple rules
		not a bad way to pass the time

		but where'll they get enough energy to prime it?
		(no such thing as a free launch)
		of course they try the chartered banks
		are told their scheme is too risky
		they sell off the volatile parts
		(black holes, super-nova explosions)
		to Americans, who make a fortune on them,
		finance the rest with Canada Council grants
		provincial lotteries, distillery profits
		and bang, off it goes!
		at least for the first three seconds

		which is when the NDP protest
		planets are going to be unequally distributed
		liberals steal their idea
		set up a fund to buy two planets for every star
		(there aren't enough to go around)
		conservatives take over, keep the fund they pooh-poohed
		but drop universality
		bigger stars, after all, can support more planets
		particularly conservative stars

		provinces tell the feds: butt out, stars are regional
		(they get their way finally and milk it)
		somehow the Maritimes end up with all the barren galaxies
		Ontario grabs the richest cluster, running it prudently
		for owners in New York
		only annoyed at the fusion royalties to the west
		townplanners travel to distant quasars
		study conservation at the taxpayers' expense
		Quebec renumbers its Messier objects in French

		OK, it's easy to criticize, the place isn't bad
		one can walk around the stars at night without being mugged
		but who bothers?
		I mean, where are we? a game from Canada?
		folks just stick at home
		wait for the Dallas model

..........................................Copyright © Rod Anderson 1987

Published in Sky Falling Sunny Tomorrow, Toronto: Wolsak & Wynn, 1989
Also published in More Garden Varieties, Toronto: The League of Canadian Poets, 1989
Re-published in The Toronto Sun, June 22, 1990

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"The Limiting Speed of Dreams" is a play on the concept of relativity. The special theory of relativity (STR), as you all know, says that there is no preferred frame of reference in the universe, so that when two observers are traveling relative to one another it is meaningless to ask who is still and who is moving. One of the related causes or effects (depending on how you want to look at it) of this theory is that the speed of light is a constant for all observers and nothing can travel faster than this speed. The analogy in this poem is, of course, to alternative states of consciousness. Which is real and which is dreamland?

		I never dream, said the rarefied Grat
		shifting its particles about
		polarizing slightly
		of course you do, signed the Belmax
		everyone does
		not me, said the Grat
		but it was lying
		too embarrassed to explain
		every daytime when it blanked out
		it dreamed it was a woman called Clara
		who woke up in a second universe
		just as the Grat hit chaos

		Clara? asked the Belmax
		the night the Grat finally confessed
		a woman called Clara in a second universe?
		where atoms are stable?
		where there are stars and planets?
		where people walk about breathing air?
		the Belmax synchronized its quanta,
		and who has three lovers on the go,
		because she can't make up her mind?
		yes yes, said the Grat, I know it sounds strange
		but that's my dream

		no, said Clara, that's wrong
		the Grat is my dream
		when I get fed up with this male / female business
		(which is every night)
		I escape to my Grat dream
		float around in the higher void
		she's crazy, said the Grat
		I just dreamed her thinking that

		the Belmax condensed intently
		can we be sure, Grat, we're the ones awake?
		of course we can, I'm awake, said the Grat
		oscillating its gravitons as Clara
		sighed, rolled over in her sleep
		but the Belmax resonated in fractal mode
		looked up, its symmetries askew
		eureka! Grat! suppose it's all relative!
		when two observers dream each other
		what if asking who's awake has no meaning?

		this was getting too close for comfort
		in a third universe a hand reached out
		flicked a switch

..........................................Copyright © Rod Anderson 1987

Published in Sky Falling Sunny Tomorrow, Toronto: Wolsak & Wynn, 1989

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"Twenty Hypotheses" is a series of miniature thought experiments on Einstein's question as to the freedom, or lack of it, for the God who created the universe.

					What I'm really interested in is whether God could
					 have made the world in a different way. 
										Albert Einstein

..........................................Copyright © Rod Anderson 1987

Published in Sky Falling Sunny Tomorrow, Toronto: Wolsak & Wynn, 1989

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Poets are supposed to write about love -- so it is time to insert a love poem to my wife ("The New Physics"). It is meant to be read slowly -- with real pauses at the line-breaks.

.........................................Copyright © Rod Anderson 1987

Published in Sky Falling Sunny Tomorrow, Toronto: Wolsak & Wynn, 1989

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As I suggested in some earlier comments, consider the matter of space and time -- the subject addressed in "The Reality Game". We are used to defining reality against a backdrop of space and time. If a house occupies real space and lasts over real time, then we say that the house is real (as opposed to being a fictional house -- say, Wuthering Heights or the House at Pooh Corner). That is, the house is real if you can situate it in the real framework of space and time. And why is that framework itself real? Well, that's a given. At least with respect to the house in question.

To repeat earlier comments, it is such questions (or koans) that seem to me to lead most quickly to a sort of Zen state of being stuck -- the state which inspires a sense of awe at the imponderability of our situation.

				I


		assume a real house
			that you're there and looking at it
		yellow stucco
		silhouetted against
		nothing else
		now stare at the front of it
		can you see a green door?
			yes? then it's as real as the house
			no? then it's just a thought you had
				(where a new green door might go)
		you can't decide about the door
		except as framed by the house
		and how do you know the house is there?
		but that was assumed


				II

		to escape the assumption
		test the house against a bigger frame
		assume a real universe
		is the house still there?
			yes? then as real as the universe
		but here the proof stops
		the last assumption sticks


				III

		what I mean is
		why do we fear the end of reality
		years from now when the stars burn out?
		it was never here anyway
		save by assumption

		which includes us
		here, loving these ochre dreams,
		who shouldn't fear our own ends
		though we all do

		couriers for evolution

		the game insisting
		one run it seriously


				IV

		questions are permitted
		(and will be filed unopened)


				V

		assume your smile
		I should take that seriously
		nothing else

..............................Copyright © Rod Anderson 1989

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We are used to thinking of the lapping of water on a beach as peaceful. But one can look at it another way -- as the inexorable beating of time by a cosmic clock that was running long before we were here and will run long afterwards (though not forever). This is the viewpoint taken in "Waves". I was thinking also of the terrible rhythmic time-pulse which Gustav Holst evokes in one of the movements (was it Uranus?) in The Planets.

		In the late Pleistocene
		they set upon your (your?) beach,
		these waves that won't relent
		SHWAAA         SHWAAA
		it's an old story: ancient torture by water
		the beach writhed, changed shape, broke for new shores,
		was caught, brought back, couldn't shake them,
		tonight jail-broken prisoner doesn't try
		there's a lesson for you there -- somewhere --
		In a million years
		(you and evolution long since down the drain)
		only the sound of their lapping
		wearing down time
		SHWAAA         SHWAAA


		Soothing? oh God! they call a clock soothing?
		SHWAAA         SHWAAA


		Say are you the jock with the water clock
		jogging around your little block?
		beachbum beachbum
		you've been lapped
		not even in the running
		SHWAAA         SHWAAA


		Is that all you wanted to do?
		such a little thing
		and you being only just started
		and already running out of . . . 
		just put your head in our lap
		just -- don't interrupt -- be
		SHWAAA         SHWAAA


		still


		Not good at it are you
		no matter no matter
		worry and writhe if you choose
		it's all one to us with aeons to go
		we seek our own level, pace ourselves for the last lap
		SHWAAA         SHWAAA

		

..................................Copyright © Rod Anderson 1985
Published in Quarry , issue #35/4, Autumn 1986

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"Extra-terrestrial intelligence" is a little piece -- aiming at sort of the tone of some of Kurt Vonnegut's early science fiction stuff (human history being a creation of some intelligent space beings solely for the purpose of signalling some distant home galaxy to send supplies).

		every day I walk about disguised
		watch people's (your) reactions when I frown
		drop coded messages in random litter barrels
		hundreds of them
		somewhere a hidden office in a safe house
		collates them on the latest computer
		distant subscribing galaxies get a complete report
		making sense of it all
		that's not my part of it -- I just report
		don't even get a byline

.........................................Copyright © Rod Anderson 1985

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"Late-blooming cosmos" again a small joke. Why does the flower have the same name? But there is also the germ of an idea underneath. One may, after all, ask: why did the cosmos come so late -- meaning, why was the universe's birth so recent (only four and a bit solar system lives ago)? Of all the possible numbers between one and infinity, four is suspiciously close to the beginning. Why do we live so close to the universe's birth? Possible answer: universes die young -- close to the beginning is the only time observers can possibly inhabit it. Or? You have a better answer?

		'sow them in the spring coldframe
		pinch back once
		an explosion of blooms by fall'
		we tried
		no blooms       no seedlings
		nothing

		perplexed
		we pitched them on the compost
		now nine months later
		through the snow one shoot appears
		then another
		and today       just before lunch
		when no one was expecting anything
		the big bang

..........................................Copyright © Rod Anderson 1989

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Another science mini-joke, I guess. Playing with indefiniteness (in articles or people) and radioactive decay. Maybe lack of commitment leads to decay?

		we made them
		almost massless articles
		hiding in a car's exhaust
		and yet so small
		so blandly indefinite
		faint stammerers
		streams of them pass right through you every second
		a thing, a, to note, a, you see, a
		scientists say they don't really hurt
		but they collect in our air
		contaminate our atmosphere, stratosphere,
		van Allen belts, you name it

		something ought to be done --
		if they could only be trapped
		held in magnetic-bottles, inertial-capsules,
		any sort of bag really

		trouble is bags degrade
		decompose, deconstruct
		beta and gamma rays first
		bg bg bg they clatter to the ground
		that's OK -- the ground can be debugged
		consonants aren't so hard to handle
		long as our land-fill sites last

		but decay lets the alpha out of the bag
		out of the hat, out of the nuclear waste trap
		and they evaporate into the vowelant air
		now everyone's breathing them
		even keeping indefinite articles around the house
		vague is in

		something really ought to be done
		here our consonants drift apart
		and all we say is aaaaa
		stick out our tongue
		an everlast gasp without begin or end

		what will our children think?
		

..........................................Copyright © Rod Anderson 1989

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Partly about science and partly about gravity vs levity, I guess. The little girl creates the Big Bang by accident (was the Big Bang an accident or was it caused and, if so, from what?). 'Something' and 'anti-something' is a reference to a vacuum being made up of an endless dance of the creation and mutual annihilation of particles and anti-particles. It's counter-intuitive that a vacuum (which we think of as nothing) is so full of activity - hence the pun on "nothing's unstable". The reference to spirit bubbles coalescing is like the idea of a global biosphere or collective unconscious or the Gaia hypothesis (the earth as a living system) or whatever you want to call it. But at the end we deal with the supposed 'serious' self-absorption of the universe (cleaning up faulty physics) which has lost the sense of play which perhaps created it in the first place.

		that was the hardest part
		or would be if you were trying: she wasn't --
		just goofing about one morning
		skipping up and down on gauge fields
		rolling differential equations around in her palms
		watching them collide like dice
		and there it came
		nothing -- into existence by accident
		oh! she cried, clapping her hands
		like finding a pin balanced on its point
		how lucky lucky lucky

		that's really the end of the story
		the rest unfolds like empty magician-patter
		after the sleight of hand's over
		everyone knows nothing's unstable
		keeps decomposing into something and anti-something
		and BANG there it goes again
		zip zap -- timber!
		(a pin has to fall in some direction after all)
		look how many particles it makes

		and just the right kind to fuse into atoms
		to form stars, clusters of galaxies
		self-replicating helices
		which spawn, in turn, spirit bubbles
		oh my, how they foam over the surface of planets
		trying to reduce surface tension
		until one century they coalesce:
		a communal consciousness
		absorbing all past and present lives
		(who sigh with relief, fitting in 'at last')

		and how responsible it is
		walks out in its best Sunday dress
		cleaning up faulty physics
		inspects to the limits of the universe
		stops deadly expansion in the nick of time
		stabilizes everything, ho hum

		then looks around
		sees her still playing
		little girl! for goodness sake! it calls
		come in, it's late, pick up those pins
		what were you doing out there anyway?
		O . . . nothing
		but under her breath
		her soft childish laugh
		lucky lucky lucky





..........................................Copyright © Rod Anderson 1987

Fitting" moves from words (and poems, I guess), to bodies, to lives. However much body-union is pleasurable, life-union is surely the ultimate turn-on. The snow queen in the first stanza is, of course, Hans Andersen's, who leaves Kay alone in the ice palace to try and make the ice fragments spell some forgotten word. The eight-limbed creature of the second stanza is, of course, a reference to Plato's myth that man and woman were once joined together and later separated.

			Words fitting into place:
			fragments of a shattered ice crystal.
			Not this way, maybe like that --
			when suddenly here it is whole again. Look,
			you can hardly see the cracks.
			I don't deny it gives a quick chill of delight,
			but it is not enough.
			Some snow queen can have her puzzle back.  Words
			are too cold.

			Bodies fitting into place:
			eight-limbed creature of the myths, hot-blooded,
			wrestling with itself. More meaning
			in the curve of your calf and my ache to touch it
			than in the cleverest word game.
			And when the self-grasping ends, happy creature
			resting whole.

			Lives fitting into place:
			confluence of two streams, closer than touch.
			If we know how, would you not come exploring, we two
			stepping one moment outside our bodies
			to splash barefoot through those streams?
			Joined by a trillion tributaries,
			all part of one river.
			We flow into ourselves
			and everyone
			and are content.

			I think I do not understand a word,
			stare only stupidly at the meaning of your body,
			and do not comprehend at all the river.
			But one loves anyway
			in ignorance.

..............................Copyright © Rod Anderson 1983

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We sometimes think of ourselves as permanent and our possessions as ephemeral. But of course it is the other way around. Things survive. It is we, their caretakers, who come and go. Or it may be like innumerable bees coming and going, each one inconsequential, and only their soft drone or hum carries on. Something like this was my object in "Inconstancy".

	An empty room
		no not empty		that was wrong
			just no humans no hum
				just now nobody home.

	But filled with their artifacts. One assumes
		perhaps a few hours ago people were here had come
			to build use rearrange these things or pass them on
				heirloom or loan.

	Take that sofa		someone
		must have brought it here one time.
		Now through the window winter sun will loom
			all afternoon		its yellow light on these cushions
			too smooth to manifest depression
				where probably the owners sat
				this year or last.

	They come and come these owners (thinking the room is theirs)
		like silent caretakers they dust and broom
			as in some scarcely used museum
				then stooped		go shuffling home.

	Really you know they
			make less noise less real noise
			than the dry air (through hidden ductwork blown)
				passing with its soft insistent drone

	Or than the almost inaudible
		whisper of different traffic
		(whisper to whom?)
			a half-remembered dream
			too far to waken objects of the home
				provisions for sleepers in an ancient tomb.

	Still the constant drone drone drone
		soft boom of a distant bell
			the sofa glimmers silver on gloom
				still winter moon.

	These things persist.
		It's the caretakers who
			inconstant
				silently go or come
				go and go or come.

..................................Copyright © Rod Anderson 1983

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"José Paulo, Pintor das Portas" is the first sonnet I have written since a bunch of very heavy-handed sonnets as a teenager. I hope it will have progressed somewhat. There really is a famous Brazilian painter, José Paulo Moreira da Fonseca, who was famous for his paintings of doors. And my daughter really did visit Brazil once on one of my many (at the time) business trips. But whether she entered the picture, who can say? I know that the rest of us stayed certainly on the outside looking in.

		We spot the open doorway hanging where
		a window could have been.  I frown: "I know
		that guy!  He paints those doors."  "that's years ago,"
		our Rio host replies.  "Now beaches, bare
		skies, waves."  Like those at which you turn to stare,
		my daughter, through those trompe l'oeil jambs?  "Although,"
		handing me gin he winks,  "Zé's studio
		for extra cash has always doors to spare."

		But you aren't listening, leap the threshold, skip
		barefooted down the background sand, unseen,
		cartwheel away from me, then watch, serene,
		some pied-face stranger paint 'Sea-scape with Ship',
		while, on our side, the host and I trade views
		of doors as symbols, keeping on our shoes.

.........................................Copyright © Rod Anderson 1984

Published in Poetry Toronto , January 1986

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A view of the street from a Toronto apartment building.

			flash spray
			tires rip-tide down the street
			tear open velcro seams
			quick let's get home!
			dragging their tread-thin wakes behind them

			sound of a hundred paint-rollers
			slicking over the dull gray (and about time!)
			black-glass lacquer: bright but still tacky
			tomorrow the second coat
			how about yellow for a change?

			munchkins hurry by with umbrellas
			so serious

..........................................Copyright © Rod Anderson 1986

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I've always had a pet peeve about people whose beautiful thoughts are allegedly too complicated for us mere mortals to comprehend. They're not trying to be obscure. Oh no. They'll try to explain, to simplify, to draw little pictures for our simple eyes. It's just that their thoughts are so refined that it's difficult to find language simple enough to convey them to simple minds like ours -- like trying to explain the Pauli exclusion principle for quantum states to a kindergarten child. Well give me a break! Anyway, that's the subject of "Pry Open with Knife and Serve Well Chilled". Of course, in fairness, I must admit that maybe indeed the subtle thoughts were there and I was simply unable to grasp them.

			I'm trying my best to explain
			it's not easy

			see? already you've got it wrong
			I'll try again (but not too hard)

			smiling as you shallow splashers
			grope for the initial grit

			you'll never get there
			too many lustrous obscuring layers

			snug in my watery chambers I polish
			amazed at my life's work

			aren't I the deep one?
		

..........................................Copyright © Rod Anderson 1987

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The poem "Sleep" begins its life as a sort of mystical butterfly but then goes into a cocoon and emerges as a little petulant caterpillar. Well that's the way it works sometimes. We don't always progress.

		we are changing during sleep and will emerge
		strange things shiny and new
		the metamorphosis occurs subtly during the night
		in the cocoon of each other's arms

		maybe the arms are just to supply the heat
		to speed up the chemical changes

		each night the changes turn out a new permutation
		this after all is how karma works
		and scientists pretend they don't know what sleep is for!

		but sometimes the wheel sticks
		this morning I woke up and found myself the same as yesterday
		I really hate that!
		have to rehearse the same role again
		actually that was years ago

		well it's all very fine for you with your wings
		some of us still crawl in the larval stage
		I bet against the sticking wheel doing it again
		keep losing my bet double it lose again

		while you dram laugh change
		however hard I sleep I know I'll never
		catch up now

..........................................Copyright © Rod Anderson 1985

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"Greenhouse" is jazzing around with horticultural names. But it is also about glass ceilings -- and glass walls too. The five smooth stones come from I Samuel 17:40 -- the stones David chose from the brook to slay Goliath.

		the Germans call it a Glashaus
		so why do we call it green?
		confusing, I guess, the house and its inhabitants
		the hanging asparagus fern, the spiky tall dracaena
		the bamboo palm, the glossy weeping fig
		we whisper our confusion into elephant's-ears
		(those heart-shaped big rememberers)
		confide foolishly in false aralia
		mammilaria elongata! we've had too much!
		shuffle drunkenly about -- splendens, socialis, vulgaris
		dream watery-eyed the legends of anthurium
		of shattering finally our invisible walls
		crowd shouting around the davidia tree
		touching its young green leaves, its long white bracts
		and eyeing (wild und traurig) now around its base
		those final five smooth stones

.........................................Copyright © Rod Anderson 1985

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