Cosmos

A Poem

James Applewhite

• Publisher: LSU Press
• Year: 2014
• Topic: Literature
• eBook ISBN:
  9780807155011
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

Throughout his long career, James Applewhite has skillfully navigated the world of science through poetry. His new book makes no exception, fearlessly exploring time and consciousness in relation to the universe as described by Big Bang cosmology -- and as experienced by human beings in the everyday world. Applying experiences from his present-day life as well as a multitude of memories from his childhood to scientific theories of the nature of the universe, the poet engages in a patient but relentless -- and finally deeply rewarding -- quest for a sense of meaning in a cosmos whose dimensions of space and time defy the human capacity to imagine.
In his quest, Applewhite suggests the continuing possibility of a crucial connection to the universe through our seemingly tiny, evanescent experiences here on planet Earth. The poems in Cosmos help us value the human-related dimensions of being all the more as they are discerned against the cosmic vastness.
"We've known for a long time gravitydoesn't exist, " Dr. Verlinde said.This adhesion of all mass to itself isfollowing the vector of energy downwardwith the thermodynamic arrow, which pierces uswith our moments. The illusion encloses, scenes in mind return nonsensically -- my foot slips on the slick bank and fora moment suspended in fallingI know the time slow down, seeingthe red-star sweet gum leafsliding with the current's surfacethat holds the late September skyand heat in a thin film.
Then I pierce it, splashing through -- the rowboat my brother called the Peanut Shellrocking out from the bank whileI arise back through the brown creekskin and into air of the dream worldI know so well, where Henry is laughing.
-- from "Reading the Science News"

CONVERSATION IN FACULTY COMMONS

for Berndt Mueller

He is slender, intellectual, his accent
Austrian—a cosmic theorist.
I studied physics formerly,
loved astronomy as a boy.
Among faculty colleagues,
we talk across salads, in words like these:

“So you think the first universe
primordial—violent—unconscious?”

“Yes,” I answer. “Polyphemus,
in the painting by Turner.”

“Oh,” he says. “The giant that Odysseus blinded.
Then unwisely derided.
But why this cosmos without sight?”

“Because—” I pause. “Withholding light.
Dark at first. Don’t you recall
describing to me the first fireball?”

“Yes, I remember. It was the first
time we met.”

“You made me imagine the initial zero.
The nothing. The empty O.”

“Yes.” He pauses. “I recall that
you brightened to hear of the release of light.”

“For three hundred and eighty thousand years,”
you told me, “no light appears.”

“Yes. But why invoke the Cyclops
at the beginning of the universe?”

“Thinking of origin-unity,
I imagined this being, of only one eye.”

“But I thought that we equally sought
descriptions without mythology.”

“I start with the earliest instant,”
I say, “in darkness. Then the birth of light.”

“So your energy-god—not even a head—
is a blind eyeball instead?”

“My bodiless giant states the paradox:
light in dark, order in violence.
I need to dramatize
the event your numbers realize.”

“Very well. Go ahead. Poetize.”

“The universe begins as a point.
The first tight sphere of heat
withholds its light,
like an in-turned eyeball
foreseeing all,
and finally evolving sight.”

“You mean in the release of light,”
he says. “I accept this poetic mistake.
Early on, the fireball was opaque.”
“Then it reached a critical boundary,
cooling, and the universe began to see.”

“No,” he says, sipping coffee. “Not exactly.
The fireball underwent a phase-transition,
reaching a temperature where atoms form.
Then light shone free, this one early time.”

“If licensed to be poetical,”
I say, “light is like embodied thought—
beautiful, transiently real.
Physically immaterial.”

“Well. Light is a materialized energy.
Photons form, in the breaking symmetry.
Light responds, slightly,
to the curvature of gravity.”

“Did the freezing of energy, into material form,
create all space and time?”

He considers. “Spacetime arose spontaneously,
with the outward, cooling momentum of energy.”

“If matter and energy are one,”
I ask, “inter-convertible, why is the direction
of time one-way—from unity to separation?”

“That is, perhaps, a theological question—
whereon physicists should have no opinion.”

“So the universe remains mysterious.
We arise from its violent histories.

Art balances on the precarious
edge.”

“Singing of the precipice,”
he says. “You poets are in love with chaos.”

“We imagine a different consciousness—
thought-feeling, in a rough embrace.”

“Yes,” he agrees. “Yet order arose with creation.”

“Cosmology supplies a beginning—
an uncanny one, without meaning.”

“Physics doesn’t deal in opinion.
There is theory, experiment—and verification.”

“So unity fell into successive separations.”

“We prefer to say, into forces and actions.”

“Plotinus speaks of emanations.”

“Physics inspires more confidence
than the philosophers of ancient Greece.
Or of Alexandria. However. The emerging
order is richly fostering.
It encodes a tendency
toward coherence, within partial stability.”

“The time-world emerges from eternity—
the limited, from infinity.”

He frowns, then shrugs. “We
describe such things mathematically—
without auras of divine intent.”
He pauses. “Yet there was an event,
when spacetime emerged from an a-spatial point.”

“I think of it as a first star,”
I say.

“But containing all others. And far,
far away in time.”

“But how sublime,”
I say.

“Supremely violent, within exquisite
parameters,” he adds.

“Those elemental constants
that you mentioned once?”

“Yes,” he says, “of course. The force
and mass of the universe,
in their almost-perfected balance.”

I sigh. “My elementary physics lesson.
Begin with proton and electron.”

“Electromagnetic force binds electron
to the nucleus negative to positive.”

“So,” I say, “and that is how we live.”

“Yes,” he smiles. “With exactly the energy,
so that atoms interact chemically.”

“So that plants, in photosynthesis,
use elemental energy of the cosmos,
once frozen into mass—
now, in its new release,
by the process of solar fusion.
Because of proton and electron.”

“You look very pleased with yourself,”
he says, pleasantly. “You simplify
a very great complexity. Such stuff
is part of a feel-good ecology.”

“But explain why a universe
exists, rather than nothing. Or chaos.”

“The proton and electron, in relative mass.
The strong force, within the nucleus,
in proportion to electromagnetic force.
The lesser, nuclear weak force,
randomly regulating atomic decay.”

“Why must there be an instability?”
I ask.

“Atoms unchangeably uniform
would permit no change over time,”
he answers.

“And evolution depends on
variability, between proton and neutron?”

“Eventually. Yes. This partial stability
in the nucleus is held within vaster gravity.”

“So the balance of force and mass
allows the stars to coalesce
and burn, in an immense curvature of space?”

“Yes. Shall we have dessert?”
He smiles. “We have order to celebrate.”

“Well.” I frown. “The star-fields, with gravity,
curve even light into webs of entropy—
within, apparently, dark matter, dark energy.”

He sits indecisively. “Perhaps. We don’t
quite understand those concepts yet.”

“But you believe that you will—
that a clearer theory is inevitable.”

“Yes,” he says. “That is my belief.”

“Entropy is a mortal grief,”
I say. “Time’s crooked arrow, pointing one way.
A snake in the garden, as physical decay.”

“Well,” he says, “all mortality shall not prevent
my enjoying a dessert.
Won’t you join me?”

“All right,” I sigh, rising heavily.

He chooses blueberry pie, I a chocolate torte.
“Do you find a consolation in taste?”

“Of a sort,”
I say. “But the pleasure is brief.”

“Do you need a greater good—some sauce of belief?”

“This time of the cosmos exists without meaning.
It is beginning, tending toward ending.
Do you see any purpose in the universe?”

“No.” He pauses. “Yet it evolved consciousness.”...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Reading the Science News
• A Premonition
• Night Writing
• The Guests
• Platonic Astronomy
• Cooper’s Hawk
• Two in October Light
• Practice Bombing
• The Sea Connection
• A Cemetery in Normandy
• In the Gardens Beside a Library
• Anthropic Cosmological Principle
• Hemlock Hill
• Learning the Directions
• Unpublished Interview
• Repairing the Farmhouse
• The Home Place
• Reforested Land
• A Hotel Tower above Oahu
• The Late April Garden
• Conversation in Faculty Commons
• First Light
• The Shadowed Counterpane
• Imagining Origin
• Time in the First Village
• Membrane Theory
• Quest for Beginning
• First Star
• Coming Home in the Dark
• The Language of Space and Time
• Driving from Columbia