An Infinity Going Inwards

Does a fine equation seem

Philosophical to you,

Or does it seem poetic?

Well, now you’ve nicely defined

The difference in flavor

Between tasting poetic

Or metaphysical, not

To say between poetry

And philosophy themselves.

One leans toward elegance,

The other profundity.

But about that equation—

What’s that all about?

Can it predict the cosmos

To twelve decimal places?

Then it’s physics. Can you prove

It’s perfectly coherent

With everything else you know

Of mathematics? Then, math.

Pretend for these purposes 

Space isn’t continuous.

In fact, it might be that space

Isn’t continuous. So.

Now you have discretized space,

As the theoretical 

Physicist puts it. You have

A cosmic piece of lattice.

Over here, among these fields,

These trembling, wavering fields,

Knots of energy pile up

And mass math. A finite jump

In any direction lands

You on, for instance, physics

Or metaphysics, maybe

Poetry. But that’s cheating.

Parity violation!

Red card! An anomaly 

Cancellation penalty.

Sadly, math’s no longer

Poetry. It’s too ugly.

It’s only physics, time out

For philosophy. Fine mess

You’ve gotten your math into.

What manifold nonsense space

Has pretzeled into itself.

Throw some probability 

Like a blanket over it.

The blanket’s now a landscape

Woven out of equations

Covering lumpy physics.

Poetry, philosophy

Agree it’s fun to picnic

Off such blankets, so long as

Someone finds something to eat.