shadowgraphs 128: oscillations in the trap

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

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