Always we find ourselves at the divergence
Of two paths travelling out.
Otherwise, our questions
Would already have been answered.
......................
Turning nightward in these domes
Our shutters opening like secrets
We set our silvered cups to catch
The fine mist of light
That settles from our chosen stars
On the edge of the unanswerable
Even here, our questions.
....................
These are two samples of poetry written by a brilliant astrophysicist whose field of research was 'dark matter'. Rebecca Elson wrote as an agnostic whose religious scepticism was tempered by imagination, compassion and a visionary hopefulness for humanity and for a future worthy of the beauty and potential of a universe shot through with mystery.
Reading her poetry and Journal entries is like encountering a 20th Century Qoheleth, questioning, enquiring, redolent of responsibility, capable of awe and wonder at the sheer intransigence of existence in the face of the human urge to mastery and comprehension.
Reading her poetry is to have your too easily and carelessly held assumptions about faith and life interogated by someone who was an Isaac Newton scholar at Cambridge, and interpreter of the Hubble data, a Harvard researcher, and a poet whose precision with words had more to do with nuanced meaning than technical skill.
Reading her poetry is like standing in a hot shower when someone turns on the tap downstairs and suddenly the water is freezing and there's no easy or quick escape from its jetted cold.
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