Richard Feynman - Ode to a flower.
A Photon’s tale
Text of the poem:
On through the vastness of silent darkness
of space and time I travel;
The warm cauldron of my starry home,
long since I bid farewell.
The photon’s journey is never trivial,
for I carry the tales of stars;
So as I approach this planet Earth
I had almost gathered mass.
Curious place this Earth I hear,
Of water and life and seasons,
I came to know, as a I draw even near
Of humans, who could reason.
O humans, with such wonderful minds,
Will you hear the tales I bring,
Of nebulae and quasars and distant suns,
Doppler shifted for added zing!
Or would you quiver and cover yourself,
Fearing eclipses and giant snakes in the skies;
Letting superstition take over your mind
as your critical faculty slowly dies?
And so as I descend on my final fall,
You worry too much, I hear myself say
The beauty is lost, the beholder gone, for
Hardly anyone looks up anyway.
