"Schrodinger's Top Hat"

[bronze_ribbons]

This is an old poem of mine that appeared in Star*Line a ways back (July/August 2003). I'm reposting it here because it's still one of the better villanelles I've written, and because I'm being thumped by a quantum plotbunny (e.g., Dumbledore as Niels Bohr, Neville as Wolfgang Pauli, Draco as Werner Heisenberg, Lupin as George Gamow, Snape as Enrico Fermi...).



Schrödinger's Top Hat

Either there's a rabbit, or there's not,
but if you wait, a rabbit may appear
but even if you wait, it well may not.

Some might say that magic's merely rot --
a cheerful shake of superstition's snare.
Sometimes there's a rabbit, sometimes not,

but even if you skip the wheel and slot,
the sidewalks show more cracks from year to year.
Will your mother blame you? Maybe, maybe not.

It's hard to read the future when you're taught
not to cross each corner 'til you're there
whether rabbits wait for you or not.

And even if the scarves stay bright and taut,
will the coins fall freely from each ear?
Even if we wait, they well may not,

but 'til the fingers fail to catch what's caught,
joy can leap from nowhere like a hare:
either there's a rabbit, or there's not,
no matter if you wait for it or not.

~ pld

Comments

[schemingreader.livejournal.com]

I like this. I recognize an allusion to A. A. Milne's poem about the bears. I also love the layering of magician images. It was also fun to read it out loud to my son.

[xanthophyllippa.livejournal.com]

Young James Potter would make the perfect James D. Watson.

[xanthophyllippa.livejournal.com]

Okay, so I was reading that link to Gamow, and have to put on my historian's hat for just a moment: Delbrück, like Gamow, was a physicist before he moved into biology. And the shift to DNA that the link characterizes as something like "abrupt and unexpected" wasn't really either; after World War II, there was a fairly significant "migration" of physicists into molecular biology. For some - Linus Pauling was one - this shift was prompted in part by a collective dissatisfaction with the way in which physics had been put to use during the war and in part by an interest in finding new areas of research to which they could apply their analytical techniques. It wasn't so much that they thought biology was "peaceful," but rather that they thought the questions biologists were asking could be answered through methods and analyses that were a standard part of physics. For those who objected to various events of the war, molecular biology offered them a whole new area to explore.

So the point of this is, I'm nitpicking that blurb about Gamow, even though it's not actually wrong. :^)

I really like that you like science.

(Neville, by the way, could be Linus Pauling. Good guy, very good at some things, but when he gets it wrong he no-holds-barred, damn-the-torpedoes gets it wrong.)

[ellid.livejournal.com]

Draco as Heisenberg?

*faints*

[marginaliana]

I really like this poem. I like the way it circles back, which also reflects the subject. I felt like the poem was sort of like a magic trick in itself. Very cool. :D

Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

[(Anonymous)]

Peg poem!

Thank you for sharing; I do love this!

Mary

[jen-deben.livejournal.com]

*fangirls 4 u*

But I still want to read that Harry Potter/Quantum Pioneers fic. :D

[musigneus.livejournal.com]

One of the (many!) things that have dismayed me about the whole LJ strikethrough thing is your move away (although the feeds certainly help). With the unfriending I had a sudden panic that I wouldn't be able to read your poems anymore, so I came to check and was relieved to see your letter to your father unlocked. Then I saw this one, which I'd missed - Schrödinger! Great images, and I like the way it circles back at the end. Now I'll have to come back another evening and see what other treasures I've missed!