It is nice to look for these histories and follow them to origination…..

Nice poem of yours

#8: Anna : I took the poetry from _The Complete Poems of Cavafy_ translated by Rae Dalven, Harvest Books, 1976

#13 Plato
Perhaps Godfrey Saxe made poetry out of this ancient Sufi story:

An elephant belonging to a traveling exhibition had been stabled near a town where no elephant had been seen before. Four curious citizens, hearing of the hidden wonder, went to see if they could get a preview of it. When they arrived at the stable they found that there was no light. The investigation therefore had to be carried out in the dark.

One touching its trunk, thought that the creature must resemble a hosepipe; the second felt an ear and concluded that it was a fan. The third, feeling a leg, could liken it only to a living pillar; and when the fourth put his hand on its back he was convinced it was some kind of throne. None could form the complete picture; and of the part which each felt, he could only refer to it in terms of things which he already knew. The result of the expedition was confusion. Each was sure that he was right; none of the other townspeople could understand what had happened, what the investigators had actually experienced.

(from chapter “The Elephant in the Dark” in The Sufis by Idries Shah, 1964)

———-

Golden Threads

When I am stripped to my essence,
sublimely precious
is the small, the shadow, the trace.

Childrens’ questions heard in passing through a door.
A muddy footprint planted on a hallway floor.

Whiffs of garlic through an open pane.
A missing cosine angle, searched for in vain.

A cuckoo from a clock heard while in bed.
Olive oil dripping from a piece of fresh bread.

A misdirected email from a woman in pain.
A dog’s sorrowful eyes seen through the rain.

The hands in a photograph of a long lost world.
Reading glasses on a table with one stem uncurled.

Elements weaving through the fabric of my life,
these are the golden threads,
which become the cloak, which I wear
to keep me warm.

Amara Lynn Graps 4 March 2001

When reading a cosmic v. thread
it stimulates cells in my head
but then if the topic
turns slightly anthropic
I say better off dead than read

It’s quite a common poem here seen by those who have been involved in the quantum gravity issues. So I thought to give this more for the general public, and for those who needed to understand how different approaches are part and parcel of the same quest for describing and loking for this emergent property( like Sean saids we have to be careful)in regards to quantum gravity. What are the rules that define it?

The Blind Men and the Elephant
John Godfrey Saxe (1816-1887)

It was six men of Indostan
To learning much inclined,
Who went to see the Elephant
(Though all of them were blind),
That each by observation
Might satisfy his mind.

The First approached the Elephant,
And happening to fall
Against his broad and sturdy side,
At once began to bawl:
“God bless me! but the Elephant
Is very like a WALL!”

The Second, feeling of the tusk,
Cried, “Ho, what have we here,
So very round and smooth and sharp?
To me ’tis mighty clear
This wonder of an Elephant
Is very like a SPEAR!”

The Third approached the animal,
And happening to take
The squirming trunk within his hands,
Thus boldly up and spake:
“I see,” quoth he, “the Elephant
Is very like a SNAKE!”

The Fourth reached out an eager hand,
And felt about the knee
“What most this wondrous beast is like
Is mighty plain,” quoth he:
“‘Tis clear enough the Elephant
Is very like a TREE!”

The Fifth, who chanced to touch the ear,
Said: “E’en the blindest man
Can tell what this resembles most;
Deny the fact who can,
This marvel of an Elephant
Is very like a FAN!”

The Sixth no sooner had begun
About the beast to grope,
Than seizing on the swinging tail
That fell within his scope,
“I see,” quoth he, “the Elephant
Is very like a ROPE!”

And so these men of Indostan
Disputed loud and long,
Each in his own opinion
Exceeding stiff and strong,
Though each was partly in the right,
And all were in the wrong!

Moral:

So oft in theologic wars,
The disputants, I ween,
Rail on in utter ignorance
Of what each other mean,
And prate about an Elephant
Not one of them has seen.

Our Unrequited Why

Poetry impugns
A prisoner haunted
Listen

Perhaps this was I
Zeal with gilded word
Verbose

Learn that squirming dance
Open guile once deft
Abide

Circle capricious
My chaste salient
Concrete

Almost an avail
Stiff temerity
Brazen

Drink arid champagne
Ephemeral ice
Warm breath

Bring laughing repose
When dazzle your eye
Blushing

Bleeding universe
Mere ferocious will
Conquer

Desire spurns the dark
Linger to morning
Naked

Remember coffee
Translucent and cold
Turgid

Torpid ocean and
Liquid sky above
Secret

THE COLD WITHIN

Six humans trapped by happenstance
in black and bitter cold
Each possessed a stick of wood,
Or so the story’s told.

Their dying fire in need of logs,
the first woman held hers back
For on the faces around the fire
She noticed one was black.

The next man looking ‘cross the way
Saw one not of his church
And couldn’t bring himself to give
The fire his stick of birch.

The third one sat in tattered clothes
He gave his coat a hitch,
Why should his log be put to use
To warm the idle rich?

The rich man just sat back and thought
Of the wealth he had in store,
And how to keep what he had earned
From the lazy, shiftless poor.

The black man’s face bespoke revenge
As the fire passed from his sight,
For all he saw in his stick of wood
Was a chance to spite the white.

And the last man of this forlorn group
Did naught except for gain,
Giving only to those who gave
Was how he played the game.

The logs held tight in death’s stilled hands
Was proof of human sin,
They didn’t die from the cold without,
They died from the cold within.

Though I had known the two famous lines for a long time I only came across the full poem recently:

Ozymandias

I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read,
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed,
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look upon my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

-Percy Bysshe Shelley

Number theory is the type of math that describes the swirl in the head of a sunflower and the curve of a chambered nautilus. Bhargava says it’s also hidden in the rhythms of classical Indian music, which is both mathematical and improvisational. He sees close links between his two loves — both create beauty and elegance by weaving together seemingly unconnected ideas

While this isn’t a poem below, but a statement about poetry, I thought it relevant here?

Nothing to me would be more poetic; no outcome would be more graceful … than for us to confirm our theories of the ultramicroscopic makeup of spacetime and matter by turning our giant telescopes skyward and gazing at the stars,

Greene said.

The recognition that what could have held the eye to the quantum nature, would now recognzie the value in the stars?

Thanks for posting “Ithaca” — it was my most favorite poem when I was a teenager.

I was wondering whose the translation is in the version you posted. Thanks.

When the Present has latched its postern behind my tremulous stay,
And the May month flaps its glad green leaves like wings,
Delicate-filmed as new-spun silk, will the neighbours say,
“He was a man who used to notice such things”?

And will any say when my bell of quittance is heard in the gloom,
And a crossing breeze cuts a pause in its outrollings,
Till they rise again, as they were a new bell’s boom,
“He hears it not now, but used to notice such things”?

Openness, by Wislawa Szymborska

Here we are, naked lovers,
beautiful to each other – and that’s enough-
the leaves of our eyelids our only covers,
we’re lying amidst deep night.

But they know about us, they know,
the four corners, and the stove nearby us.
Clever shadows also know
the table knows, but keeps quiet.

Our teacups know full well
why the tea is getting cold.
And old Swift can surely tell
that his book’s been put on hold.

Even the birds are in the know:
I saw them writing in the sky
brazenly and openly
the very name I call you by.

The trees? Could you explain to me
their unrelenting whispering?
The wind may know, you say to me,
but how, is just a mystery.

A moth surprised us through the blinds,
its wings a fuzzy flutter.
Its silent path – see how it winds
in a stubborn holding pattern.

Maybe it sees where our eyes fail
with an insect’s inborn sharpness.
I never sensed, nor could you tell
that our hearts were aglow in the darkness.

This always makes me cry…

Ithaca
by Constantine P. Cavafy (1911)

When you set out on your journey to Ithaca,
then pray that the road is long,
full of adventure, full of knowledge.
Do not fear the Lestrygonians
and the Cyclops and the angry Poseidon.
You will never meet such as these on your path,
if your thoughts remain lofty, if a fine
emotion touches your spirit and your body.
You will never meet the Lestrygonians
the Cyclops and the fierce Poseidon,
if you do not carry them within your soul,
if your soul does not set them up before you.

Then pray that the road is long.
That the summer mornings are many,
that you will enter ports seen for the first time
with such pleasure, with such joy!
Stop at Phoenician markets,
and purchase fine merchandise,
mother-of-pearl and corals, amber and ebony,
and pleasureable perfumes of all kinds,
buy as many pleasurable perfumes as you can;
visit hosts of Egyptian cities,
to learn and learn from those who have knowledge.

Always keep Ithaca fixed in your mind.
To arrive there is your ultimate goal.
But do not hurry the voyage at all.
It is better to let it last for long years;
and even to anchor at the isle when you are old,
rich with all you have gained on the way,
not expecting that Ithaca will offer you riches.

Ithaca has given you the beautiful voyage.
Without her you would have never set out on the road.
But she has nothing more to give you.

And if you find her poor, Ithaca has not deceived you.
With the great wisdom you have gained, with so much experience,
you must surely have understood by then what Ithacas mean.

Nice Amara.

I’m not quite ready to post original stuff but this is one of my all time favorites and could “easily” apply to many of the threads on this blog (both scientific and unscientific)

Elliot

The Second Coming — W. B. Yeats

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all convictions, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Snow

I dare not speak, my lips are frozen.
The snowflakes are muting my words.

Falling is their only purpose, they mute my world,
wrapping me in their cold and wordless comfort.

The largest snowflakes turn on a fractal axis,
twisting, turning, and demanding my attention;
forcing me to ponder and wonder about my silent world.

Muted in my speaking language, deaf in my hearing language,
my inner voices race to compensate.

My monkey mind, flitting from one idea to another,
(SLOW DOWN SLOW DOWN!)
I try to hang on
(MUST HANG ON!)
long enough to arrive at a conclusion, or at least,
an insightful observation.
(STOP!!)

Silence. Ahhhhhh.

A fragile, colorless shape emerges,
rising from a dark and hidden place,
pausing at my skin.

Revealing itself.
A story.

_This_ story is born in the smallest and quietest moment.

Amara Lynn Graps
20 January 2001