The Red Shift of Distant Lights - 3. Being Here

by Larry Chamberlin   Jul 23, 2008


Being Here

We live in an expanding universe
Even as our world shrinks about us.
We genuflect to the spectrum
Of experiences that tells us the relevance
Of the red shift of distant lights,
Illuminating the cosmic dance in
An ever larger ballroom;

Yet while our awe of this unknowable expanse
Etches new Truths on the Stones of Knowledge
We learn that freedom is co-opted:
The false servitude to the Clockwork Universe,
Contrived account by Machina ex Deus,
Is not extinguished but merely substituted
By the prisoning probability tables which delimit
The Electron Wave, the Machina ex Quantum.

Given the certitude that all events in our horizon
Occur only in this timely continuum inflexible,
Then Day after dusty Day
Marches through our lives with such variance
As is nothing more than relative perception.

22 February 1998 Larry Chamberlin

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Latest Comments

  • 12 years ago

    by Larry Chamberlin

    To FS: This is the third poem of seven parts. It, like all of them, wrote itself in one of several single instances, all on my birthday, after I had been thinking of the matter for a couple of months. Each stood on its own, but when taken together, solidified my understanding of the world and my place in it.
    If it seems cold, dispassionate, it is because there is much emotion buried in the allusions to my past experiences & how I relate them to the phenomena of the cosmos. I am not persuading, simply discovering what I have become.

  • 12 years ago

    by Failing Stoic

    Can I ask, since you wrote this 14 years ago, how do you feel about it now? Has your view of the world changed much? I can tell, you obviously were having a profound mental revelation of sorts. Your tone is quite uninvolved. By this I mean that you speak in such a way as one would believe you are not bothered, or affected by what has inspired you. You TELL the reader what is happening in the world, rather than persuading them to feel the same. I felt the piece gave me the freedom to decide whether I agree or not. And although some of it was a bit complex, I must say, I do agree with the following:

    "We live in an expanding universe
    Even as our world shrinks about us.
    We genuflect to the spectrum"

    I must admit, your vocabulary is far more extensive than mine. I had to look up the definition of "genuflect" (awesome word by the way) and I found that by discovering it's meaning, my eyes were opened to the possibility of what you were trying to say.

    Our capability to extend our reach to distant parts of the globe has consequently minimized the grandiosity of the world. Yet we find ourselves bound by the central force that will always humble us, as such small creatures.

    I liked this, even if it was a bit too clever =]

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