Time Flies


The long science lessons that made me yawn
when placed knowingly on the scale of truths
revealing polyhedral requisites
of tactile existential conundrums
bring on a deep regret and blushing shame
at the complexities assumed as buns

Poets will teach science and scientists poetry
and thus to call synergy a wedding
between the pupils with bad memories
for names on one and rhymes on the other
So that when Cole Porter says in a song:
"I get a kick out of you"
The meaning sticks like red rouge to both lips

There are barometers for mysteries
In the metric feet of the ancient verse
If it's warm it must be twenty two degrees
Geometry sets the pitch of every mood
The shadows play on the sides of a cube
White being the mixture of all the colours

Einstein did not invent the electric bulb
nor did he invent the atomic bomb
but something about energy he knew
being a mixture of matter, light and time
Matter makes light seem like the moving thing
Time flies naked plucking the jigs and jives

Einstein made math for an intuition
He told me that time can shrink and expand
At eighteen I got so drunk time collapsed
As the room raced round and round overhead
a full hour crushed into a small minute
Space got sucked through a carpeted vortex

E=mc2

"Cold hearted orb that rules the night
Removes the colours from our sight
Red is grey and yellow white
but who decides which is right
and which is an illusion" *

* "Days of Future Passed" Moody Blues, 1969

Lucignano, 9 1 2006