The search for truth haunted him during sleeps,
Life struggled to hang on between hopes and dreams,
A plate of ideas never presented itself,
Time gradually left spots of grey in his hairs,
It left him bewildered, and his thoughts scattered
While his cat screeched for air inside the box.
Ideas are contagious, obsessions are grave,
He was caught unaware between the extremes,
Answers clawed into his weary brains,
And filled each cell with a resurgence of life.
Poison spread evenly inside the box,
The screeches of dislike slowly ceased.
His tangled life began to relieve, he felt the Sun
Shower him with vibrant quarks of love, his dark
Lab was left with the fire and light of a distant source,
The granter of verve pushed his brains to the limits,
With each ray, he felt the unpredictability of life,
He felt its supreme beauty, the cat was forgotten.
His theory received its tranquil intro, but each
Word build itself up towards a poignant revolution,
Quarks of love was replaced by the fury of science,
Erratic methods of nature became inevitable truths,
The grandeur of the world was replaced by
The sophistication of a particle in motion,
The poisoned cat hopped between life and death,
And played merrily with the tangled strings of science.
Notes
Verschränkung is the German word for Entanglement, coined famously by Erwin Schrodinger as he went on to interpret the phenomenon of Quantum Mechanics through the famous Schrondinger's Cat Thought Experiment. Basically, the experiment features a cat, a flask of poison, and a radioactive source, placed in a sealed box. If an internal monitor detects radioactivity (i.e. a single atom decaying), the flask is shattered, releasing the poison that kills the cat. The Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics implies that after a while, the cat is simultaneously alive and dead.! Yet, when one looks in the box, he finds the cat alive or dead. The thought experiment was brought forth to challenge the Copenhagen interpretation. I tried to mix these ideas with the life of the scientist and the intrinsic unpredictability of his science and his life. He is left in Verschränkung in-front of science and yet he finds a way to untangle them. To know more about the Schrodinger's Cat experiment, visit : Schrondinger's Cat Thought Experiment
Schrondingers cat...what a thought conundrum that is...def many things in the universe that leave me in awe...and deep thoughts as well...poor cat though eh?
ReplyDeleteVery sad that a scientist would play with the life of a cat in the quest of his theory. I know animals are used today for various scientific pursuits...and I am not a fan of this either. But to purposely think about poisoning a cat, in my opinion, is appalling.
ReplyDeleteMary, it was actually a thought experiment. No cats were harmed. Its only that Ive used that a bit differently with a real cat and a real experimental setup.
DeleteI really like the last four lines of the last stanza but there are some lines in here I'm not sure about, like the first two lines of S2 that just seem odd and confusing. Also the line "The screeches of dislike slowly ceased" has nice music but it also seems odd but not in a good way. I'm not sure if it's supposed to be humorous with the understatement of "dislike" but that could just be me. "vibrant quirks of love" is also odd and I'm not sure if it works. But this is still a good poem and most of the lines are quite good.
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