Once Works Well was pure technology. Now it seeks merely to divert.
Pansy subjects - Verse! Opera! Domestic trivia! - are now commonplace.
The 300-word limit for posts is retained. The ego is enlarged

Thursday 11 March 2010

Dedication plays away


Strictly come dancing (Breton duet)
Dedicated to Lucy and Tom
“My dear why don’t I mull some wine? Our Mol
Is bored and I’ve suppressed a thousand yawns.”

“You’ve had your Dowland, now let’s both enthrall
To streams of photons from Cartesian dawns.”


“My dear I’m neutron-mad, I learnt from you.
I am your wife, no mass, but critical.”

“But too naïve so take the vector view
Embracing targets algometrical.”


“My dear, these shining shells, these angled arms
Don’t sing to me of Werner’s certainties.”

“And yet in mining grace from physics’ charms
You ditch the maths and seek analogies.”


“My dear, but tell me where’s the parallel
With made-up faces and a sliding gait?”

“The face, uncertain, is the particle
The slide its even more uncertain state.”


“My dear - ” “Dear wife it’s time to mull the wine,
Heat the Bourgueil, not the blest Lafite
While I sit mulling on an endless line
Eight on its side, so hard and yet so neat.”


NOTE: Colours have no politico-significance

Novel progress 13/3/10.Ch. 17: 0 words. Chs. 1 - 16: 73,302. Comments: After re-reading and editing Ch. 16 I shrank it from 6037 words to 5674 words.

9 comments:

Unknown said...

My goodness. As witty a posy as they could hope for and as they certainly deserve. There's something about it which requires it to be sung, a duet of course.

herhimnbryn said...

I have been following this physicists badinage and your piece is grand BB. I hope Lucy and Tom print it out and hang it on a wall!

Isn't the blogging world a wonderful entity? Allowing such immediate responses.

Roderick Robinson said...

Plutarch: Since the title needed clarifying I thought I'd add in your suggestion.

HHB: But you've got access to inorganic chemistry and that's even sexier.

Lucy said...

When did you bug our living room, I demand to know!

'Algometrical' has me slightly puzzled, though I have looked it up (Tom says we shouldn't admit any ignorance in this matter, but still...)

All in all, however, we are deeply honoured and tickled to bits. HHB is very right, and I'm sure she could convince me just how sexy inorganic chemistry can be in the right hands.

Roderick Robinson said...

Lucy: Unerringly you have released an arrow directly into my Achilles heel. I found "algometrical" in the online rhyming dictionary. Luckily I have never claimed to write anything other than verse. When Plutarch, post-Retreat, asked how I defined verse I offered "Second division poetry" and he nodded.

herhimnbryn said...

Hmmmm, I feel a 'beat poem' coming on. A homage to the Inorganic Chemist...

Roderick Robinson said...

HHB: A beat poem? Wasn't Alan Ginsberg a beat poet? Very, very free verse as I remember; used a lot of paper. A poem about an inorganic chemist must adopt the tightest, most retrictive format on earth. Tighter than the bonds of a methane-thingummy molecule. But what do I know?

Rouchswalwe said...

Delightful! So glad to be eavesdropping. A tight beat poem! It could happen here!

herhimnbryn said...

Thankyou for the poem..see my comment box. I cannot hope to come anywhere near your poetical inspirations!