The Many Worlds View

I’m off to New York for a few days. I want to see the Mannerist drawing show at the Morgan Library, most particularly out of respect for my daughter Kellin who is a Mannerista fanatic now that she is living in Florence. (To read an excerpt from the New York Times review of this show, see this Slow Painting post.) I am also eager to satisfy my perpetual longing for real time Stoppardian word magic, delivered up through a viewing of his latest play, Rock ‘n’ Roll.)

Here’s another memorable poem from Young Smith’s volume, In a City You Will Never Visit (for more information, see my posting on this poet earlier this week):

The Properties of Light

vii. the many worlds interpretation

A quasar,
so the musing
physicists suggest,

is a siphon
breathing light
from another

universe beyond
the distant borders
of our own.

Just as black holes
are also siphons,
breathing light

from our own stars
to burst as quasars
in other distant

realms. Therefore,
it seems, the “causa
causans” is a mind

whose fiery
thoughts unseal
the sky. Whose

desires, like its
dimensions, can
bear no human

scale or story–whose
musing only light
itself describes.

One Reply to “The Many Worlds View”

  1. Elatia Harris says:

    Gorgeous! I love this poet, of whom I had not heard before Slow Muse. Aw, wish I were going to the Morgan Library with you…

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