Antipodes

We provide evidence for this

Duality through seven loops.

Duality doesn’t always

Signify splits and divisions.

The thing about binary pairs

Is that they’re not just binaries,

They’re paired. They have a connection.

To be dual is to be one.

Sometimes connections are hidden.

A discovery’s exciting—

For instance, the newly christened.

Antipodal duality.

This poem is not the time or place

For advanced particle physics,

But you can wrap your thoughts around

Their baby’s brand new name at least.

Antipodal duality.

One end’s scattering amplitudes

Present the probabilities

Of getting four gluons from two—

Other end, the probability

Of just one gluon and a Higgs.

Two apparently different,

Very different, outcomes from

An inversion connecting them.

That difference. That connection,

You can’t have the antipodes

Without whatever’s between them,

But whatever is between them,

However well it predicts them,

Isn’t them. They are not the same.

Does this ensure causality?

We’re not sure. We’d guess not. Incoming

Before outgoing might perhaps

Be mandatory, only just.

Can you fall asleep in China

And wake in Patagonia?

Only thanks to spinning iron.

But must you pass through the iron?

There are many ways lines make pairs.

When the Chrysanthemums Are in Bloom

We are in between, as always,
But this in-between forms a crest.

The borrowed garden has cycled
Without its absent owners, left

Alone, for the summer renters’ delight,
Who had no idea which was which

When they arrived. When they arrived,
Only the plum and some tulips

Were out in force, and to their eyes
All the rest was a mass of spring green

After winter in the desert.
Then the slowest fireworks commenced,

And it transpired that the garden
Had been arranged for a sequence

That brought each patch of new colors
Out in another corner just

As the last drooped, continuous
Waves sweeping along in an arc

And returning, some obvious—
The weeks of lilacs, of poppies,

Of irises, roses, daisies—
Some inscrutable—what were those

Savage bluish-purple carpets?
For the renters, their ignorance

Was bliss, the garden a slow show
They’d never had to cultivate,

Never planned, never had to weed,
Never knew to anticipate,

Elaborate, floromantic,
Flower clock they could no more read

Than a digital child can read
A dial or tell time by the bells.

Still, they knew what it meant for them,
Garden belonging to someone

They weren’t, unintended for them,
Past they weren’t, future they wouldn’t.

Counter Currency

Most ideas are fiercely
Conservative ideas,
In that they first appeared

Some time ago and now
Are working to get saved.
Revolutionary

Ideas conserve themselves.
Radical ideas hang
Around. Wild prophecies

Entrench themselves as wild
In domestication.
Ideas of the world’s end,

Last days around the bend,
Just around the bend, bend
Another round around.

Chivvy Boney

Will your pillowcases dry
In time for you to use them
Against your sweetly washed face?

Will your chores tomorrow go
Quietly in succession
Without any hitch to them?

Will you persuade your landlord,
Your manager, your colleagues,
Your family to help you?

What if nothing good comes true?
You’ll sleep on damp, moldy sheets,
Miss the rent, come to the brink

Of another disaster.
But nothing will go faster.

Filament, Filament, Filament

Variation by species,
By circumstances, sometimes
Even individuals—

Webs can be vast, chaotic,
Gossamer, dense, exact orbs,
Parachutes, trapdoor linings.

Whatever’s worked in the past
Tends to repeatedly get
Repeated, but does it get

Itself repeated, or just
Its spinner’s inheritance?
Some lines seem to have a mind

Of their own, especially
When they cling to you at night.

Wood Shade Science

We asked some moss
Why it was soft
And whether it
Ever conversed

With the fungi
Underneath it,
Famed for trading
Among tree roots.

It said nothing.
It had long since
Lost its language
To live like this.

It had no wish
To be helpful,
Except to be
Moss, which exists.

The Goddest

Will there ever be a winner,
A god who scores the final goal,
A cult that gets to hoist the cup?

For those who don’t keep faith with gods,
The tournaments are exhausting,
And tedious, and dangerous

To be anywhere near, just to watch.
There’s always some staggering yob
Looking to lean into a brawl

And some professorial type
Lecturing on the transcendent
Grace of faith’s most beautiful game.

Leave off. Everyone loves the sport
Until it’s their team’s turn to lose,
Their god face down between the posts,

Their heroes humiliated.
Then it’s all unfairness, until
Another green season begins.

There will never be a winner,
Only champions of the past,
Debates over who was goddest.