If all a top physicist knows <br />About the Truth be true, <br />Then, for all the so-and-so's, <br />Futility and grime, <br />Our common world contains, <br />We have a better time <br />Than the Greater Nebulae do, <br />Or the atoms in our brains. <br /> <br />Marriage is rarely bliss <br />But, surely it would be worse <br />As particles to pelt <br />At thousands of miles per sec <br />About a universe <br />Wherein a lover's kiss <br />Would either not be felt <br />Or break the loved one's neck. <br /> <br />Though the face at which I stare <br />While shaving it be cruel <br />For, year after year, it repels <br />An ageing suitor, it has, <br />Thank God, sufficient mass <br />To be altogether there, <br />Not an indeterminate gruel <br />Which is partly somewhere else. <br /> <br />Our eyes prefer to suppose <br />That a habitable place <br />Has a geocentric view, <br />That architects enclose <br />A quiet Euclidian space: <br />Exploded myths - but who <br />Could feel at home astraddle <br />An ever expanding saddle? <br /> <br />This passion of our kind <br />For the process of finding out <br />Is a fact one can hardly doubt, <br />But I would rejoice in it more <br />If I knew more clearly what <br />We wanted the knowledge for, <br />Felt certain still that the mind <br />Is free to know or not. <br /> <br />It has chosen once, it seems, <br />And whether our concern <br />For magnitude's extremes <br />Really become a creature <br />Who comes in a median size, <br />Or politicizing Nature <br />Be altogether wise, <br />Is something we shall learn.<br /><br />Wystan Hugh Auden<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/after-reading-a-child-s-guide-to-modern-physics/
