shadowgraphs 128: oscillations in the trap
Sean Howard
(poetry detected in wolfgang paul’s nobel physics lecture, 1989)
i
‘screens’: walking
into the trap? (seals –
‘the ions will perform
harmonic oscillations…’)
physics, the occupation that
goes with the territory. (the
styx in the throat.) ‘alter-
nator’ – bricklayer by
day, graffiti artist
by…
ii
‘subatomic’?
surely, micro-
biology! ‘clear
choice’: skinny-
dipping, ‘stud-
ying the curr-
ent’
iii
math’s
trap ease. (the gulab archipela-
go.) the bon voy-
age of reason –
paper boats, the
pocket liners…
lessons learnt
without hitt-
ing?
iv
god dead? well, the
crystal has melted! (
‘transition’, the long
secular phase.) ‘much
better’; in cold pursuit
… (indiscriminate pre-
cision.) ‘hurtling’ –
the circumference
toward the cen-
tre
v
applied science: ‘i-
onized’ fingers, elect-
rodes on ‘spheres’. (‘sta-
ges’; the jettisoned world
…) hunters’ blind; an-
imals, trapping the
light