There was a nearly mystical sense of revelation last Thursday, when it was announced that gravitational waves, predicted by Einstein 100 years ago, had finally been observed. What seemed almost unbelievable, merely fictional, was now the objective reality of our universe. How to celebrate? I wrote a poem:
Gravity Waves
The world had never yielded to him
its inner life; he worked,
he walked about the city, he ate,
looking after himself but waiting.
Sometimes he forgot he was waiting
or what he was waiting for,
and the world became a stranger
rushing past on the street.
Then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw her
at the supermarket, and then at the gym.
They talked. And they talked,
and ate, and fell in love.
His heart’s machinery bloomed into vision,
and he could see the world’s secret workings.
On the day they said gravity waves
were now proved, he bought flowers
for his wife, and they celebrated the love
that ripples through the universe –
shaking the loom of our woven moments,
that might seem unreal, but exists.
Congratulations to all those physicists at LIGO and Virgo, and in praise of neo-Platonism.
