I sat on the porch, watching the spring Blue skies, green grass, yellow sun Birds, tulips, weeds Watching trees--pale green newborn leaves All well with the world. When Suddenly The screen of my mind, the eye's projector Bent, buckled Twisted out of shape Without losing focus Stretched, tore and rent apart And in the opening only blackness. The green was pulled off to the edges Leaving me In the dark My God! I cried. What Happened? Where am I? I cannot see a thing! And a voice answered: "Yes, you can. Feel it!" Sharp, clear cut: no echoes in space No reverberations, too And I saw where I was. Far in space The dark pierced by pinholes of stars More and still more, all around And I felt Mostly emptiness. Density oh point two atoms per cee cee (Must be on the fringes) Point six gamma, magnetic And some high energy particle flux With assorted photons. Mostly, three degrees absolute And pretty isotropic, as far as I could feel. What is this, I cried? What sort of place? "You know quite well," He said "Out among the stars watching the universe." And why? I cried. I cannot see anyone On the radio bands all is noise No A-Em, no Eff-Em, no pulse code modulation Nothing. No spaceships either No spacewarp or supraluminous drive And no little green men. "There are no little green men" He said "There is no life in the universe except On that little blue planet of yours. In other universes, yes But that's outside your dimension And there is no spacewarp Your people will never get to this region Too far." So why bring me here? I said. "Just to show you what you are up against: Cold, vacuum, empty vastness Not that you need them. You have A pretty good place Six days it took me to fix it up. Wasn't easy You have to get all interaction constants just right Before you put it together Or else it won't work. Then you must set it off Just in the proper way. Only ignorant biologists think life starts just so By itself, as soon as all ingredients are mixed. Really, it was quite a job. Six days And I got so tired That I took the seventh off. But it's a nice world And it's developing very well, just as it was meant to Unless you people burn it up Or use it up, in some foolish way. Every process has its latent instabilities Your confused philosophers may claim That everything is preordained, but it isn't (I have made sure of this). Anyway, try to keep it going Remember that it's yours And there are no spares." "Now, to put you back" He said, and round the rim of vision Shades of pale green came rushing from infinity Joining together, closing the gap Like a moving picture run backwards When you put in the cartridge upside down (As you can do on newer models). The trees straightened Found which way was up Quivered Twitched a bit And were back as they always have been. And my wife looked at me strangely "I was wondering what has happened to you" She said "You were sitting there just staring into space And for a moment it seemed You just weren't there." 23 May 1972
|
|
Author and Curator: Dr. David P. Stern
Mail to Dr.Stern: david("at" symbol)phy6.org .
Last updated 19 July 2011