Science Communication
I don’t know why you bother with poetry Vlad mutters as he adjusts the current in the magnets, forcing them to rhyme with each other.
We sit in a control room connected to dozens of monitors, sensors and trackers trained to look for the tiniest of particles. He turns a little, wondering if I’ve detected him.
I sense him waiting for me to say something so I say something.
Looks like we’re good. Let’s start the run.
Vlad counts down
I recite detector readings and –
bursts of pions decay to muons, changing in the air like metaphors
their tracks crashing through detector slabs
like words
sometimes hitting back sometimes missing.
Seriously though. What’s the point? There are questions…
he gestures at the screen and waits for me to turn and notice so I turn and notice. Just readouts – luminosity, time of flight – but it’s the symbolism, I suppose.
…your poems can’t answer.
I watch the reading and think of the poem I heard last night, twenty feet from the wrong end of a microphone. Its poet apologising, first time, nervous.
Words curled in the ear like dipoles bending particles
fingers catching their light like quadrupoles catching their light
her rhythm an alternating current pushing them toward us
quick then slow then slow then quick.
A poke. A prick. Her tracks are ideas. Some particles decay.
Enough data gathered for both of us, I reply:
I don’t mind the questions poetry can’t answer. Nor you, I think, the ones science can’t ask.
He sighed, no opposite to attract.