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Einstein Zig-Zag
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This title provocative in the text
filled me with wonder and left me perplexed.
In heaven’s name what could this marvel be
that looked like a grin in hyperbole?
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On first thought the heading seemed like a gag
for how could light from a quasar zig-zag?
Nonetheless, a galactic scheme at heart
with a distant quasar playing a part
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a gravitational lens could design
making smiley face out in space to shine.
Or is it a grimace and not a grin
that expresses bewilderment therein?
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Perhaps it’s surprise, well we could surmise
continually about that strange guise…
As the text in the article narrates,
we are told that the light originates
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from eleven billion light years away
in the scopic spectacle on display
from the Hubble’s six images distinct
all together in this mise-en-scène linked.
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In apropos Carl Sagan ‘Cosmos’ quote
from a rare long poem that Hart Crane wrote,
‘Stars scribble frosty sagas in our eyes,’
said he, ‘the gleaming cantos in the skies
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‘of unvanquished space,’ in words that still shine
like the stars he writes of in lyric line…
The zig-zagging lens that stares out and back
could help us celestial puzzlements crack.
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To cosmologist Martin Millon cite,
he called system promising to shed light
on how space itself stretches over time
in mysteries of cosmic paradigm.
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As we look at that visage peering out
in seeming perusal as turnabout
of starry-eyed earthlings who guide their gaze
to beyonds of interstellar byways,
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some may pause for a moment to ponder
whether there are any beings yonder
whose thoughts now and then may wander to us
as creatures imagined existing thus.
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So whether a grimace or be it grin
a seeming phantasm abides therein
summoning scrutiny firmament-wise
where illusions optical crystalize.
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In a final notion for poem’s end
as troublesome worries pass ‘round the bend,
two amateur starwatchers left behind
for astronomers hereafter to find
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on their tombstone epitaph some phrases
expressing their own personal praises
of what they might sense on approaching death
at perhaps their almost ultimate breath
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when musing upon upcoming demise
and which meditations might then arise
of stelliferous marvels overhead
or how would vanish their feeling of dread.
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‘We have loved the stars too fondly’, quoth they,
to be fearful of night’ at close of day.
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~ Harley White
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Some sources or inspiration were the following…
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Hart Crane (1899—1932)
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/hart-crane
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Hart Crane ‘The Bridge’, as quoted in Cosmos by Carl Sagan
Carl Sagan: Cosmos…
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“Stars scribble in our eyes the frosty sagas, The gleaming cantos of unvanquished space.”
- Hart Crane, The Bridge, as quoted in Cosmos by Carl Sagan
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We have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.
- Tombstone epitaph of two amateur astronomers, as quoted in Cosmos by Carl Sagan
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Rare ‘Einstein zig-zag’ sheds light on universe’s hidden forces
https://www.aol.com/rare-einstein-zig-zag-sheds-115100329.html
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The light from distant objects passed through the gravitational field of closer galaxies to create a gravitational lens that looks like a “smiley face” to the Hubble Space Telescope. (CREDIT: NASA / STScl)
#poetry