Atomic Age

 

What is the sound of an atom splitting?

Of neutrons alighting dislocations

like an idea that catches you off guard.

 

It is the sound of your experience

fissioning perception and conception

unleashing hallelujahs, eurekas.

 

It has no center and no position.

You can’t see into it, not even into

your own moments of flashing satori.

 

We know it by the force of words alone,

words that ionize imagination,

whose meanings alter irreparably.

 

Out of what split, do you wonder, do

words appear spinning forwards and backwards,

handed off from one mind to another?

 

You know the reason for all that trouble

with fission, is that the force that binds

the atom together is stronger than

 

any other force we know of, stronger

than the crack of lightning, than the rolling

of planets along the slope of their sun.

 

Then words, if that is all we have, words

must be enough to know ourselves by.

Stochastic words decaying into noise.

 

Their meaning is the meaning of the force

itself, the calculus of consciousness

that binds and spills open at the egress.

---

R. Charboneau