Cliff Fell
Two L tt s fo Lo d uth fo d
My Lo d, I will w it you a way
th ough th willows,
wh that old jok th mo po k
—midnight’s da k sta —
still sings th song of its lf;
a song to b ing you back to this plac ,
to a oadsid monum nt of conc t and ma bl ,
clad in os s (blooming y llow now)
and a vin of ivy that twists a ound
th coat of a ms ca v d fo you on th wall
wh H m s T ism gistus and a Mao i chi f
stand s ntin l
b fo a sp ay of glinting moons.
*
A way that will b ing you back th ough th alphab t
and so sto , my Lo d,
(restore, my Lord)
the ghost of the letters to your name—
that rise like plumes of radiation,
the unseen energies
drifting from the half-life tombs of lead
and shafts of deep strata casing
—Rokkasho, Sellafield, Yucca Mountain—
(etc, my Lord)
or the letters scattered in your scattering formula—
the e that is electron charge,
the r that stands for ‘target-to-detector distance’—
those energies drifting across the Pacific
and all the other test sites
where the world has fallen
through the holes in its languages
—its sweet languages—
*
And so restore you to the orchards and rose gardens
of this midnight village,
to bring you back
through the atom’s great empty spaces—
a way I will imagine for you
to weave among the orbiting electrons
(the trick is to zig when they zag, my Lord,
as a wise man once said)—
or to be like the silence
that hangs between two drops of rain
falling on the roofing iron
the intervals of space that give form
to the structures of
almost nothing.
*
Though why I should want to raise you
from the dead, my Lord,
to have you step out of that ‘low joke’
that is death
and back under the big blue sky,
and look both ways into these fragments
of a life that is not quite—
the old road running east across the river,
the sweet smell of hay
in the paddocks of Spring Grove,
why should I wish to do this?—
if not to say that you were the one
who wanted to know
too much
who gave radiation its alphabet
—those ancient letters—
and unlocked the thunder from its box . . .
*
which was made of brass
back in those days of handmade instruments
and scintillation screens
and test tubes glowing eerie ( i , my Lo d,)
a box you filled with nitrogen
to fire alpha particles (helium nuclei, source: radon gas)
into the architecture of matter . . .
*
it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the long-
range atoms arising from collision of [alpha]
particles with nitrogen are not nitrogen but probably
atoms of hydrogen . . .
If this be the case, we must
conclude the nitrogen atom is disintegrated
On the side of caution, or on the risky side—
to err, my Lord, is only human
though was it error, my Lord ( o , my Lo d)
(or was it superhuman?)—
to seek the philosopher’s stone
and show the pursuit of alchemy
not the stuff of dreams
and prove an ancient poet both right and wrong—
for somewhere in The Rose Garden
—or was it The Orchard, my Lord?—
Saadi, the Sufi master, says
the alchemist dies in sorrow and frustration
while the fool finds beauty in a ruin
*
Beauty in a ruin,
or in a worn-out holey boot—
there are form and disorder in both, my Lord—
as in the laws of thermodynamics, let’s say, energy shifts
from thing to thing,
as a ghost might slip away—though:
in any process, the total energy of the universe remains at large
and disintegrates, becomes th shap -chang r
that re-forms itself in another turn of the wheel
as in these letters for you, my Lord,
I see your shade slip away again,
things shift, the poem completes its circle—
wh r in th first l tt r falls from th lin again
losing its plac as th l av s in autumn
will flutt r down from th willows of your childhood riv r
and slip through th airy atoms of th simpl chap l,
th villag susp nd d in cold moonlight
and th first wint r frost falling in str ts and all ys
and in th f ost falling
th oth l tt ’s lost, my Lo d,
lost and uns n
it adiat s th ough th mpty xpanding spac s
of th ndl ss univ s
out th ough th v ss l of n gi s—
of all that is and v was
and v t i d to b
—and all that always wants to b —
and n v to b gon —
my Lo d.
