“Look deep, deep into nature and you will understand everything better.” Einstein

The Loving Quark

Said Einstein, “into nature look, look deep
and better all things will you understand.”
To look into the heart – the seat
of love – he was, it seemed, imploring man.

And understanding better everything,
lies in that Mystery of how we beat for love
and if what is below is as above, in
that indivisible is the Great Heart mirrored –

the up, down, top and bottom, strange or charmed –
the quark. If, flavoured thus, love be the single goal of nature,
then is that Mystery built-in. Impelled the quark
by love compelled in hot pursuit of life

at every fork to ask, “Which is the loving road?”
must choose the one of sacrifice. From quark
to atom to molecule, evolving through eons, adorned
with every vice, came humankind, to hate.

But triumphed then the loving quark and triumphs still
through the One whom for Love chose sacrifice, upon that hill.

(c) 2015  Ann Isik

I’ve never tried writing a sonnet before. This one comes technically fully flawed. Apart from the first verse, I could only get the first and third lines to rhyme (and even then, only sort-of).  Both Shakespeare and Petrarch will be turning in their respective graves and sonnet writer purists everywhere will be groaning and gnashing their teeth.

The poem was inspired by the Einstein quote that captions my photo. Seeking an apt image as illustration, I came across my  also technically flawed photograph, which I took during a walk in nature.

There is undoubtedly moving through nature that which inspires poetry and I suspect, particularly, the sonnet, which – as you will already know if you’re a poet – is a form of love poetry known as lyric. The word sonnet is from the Italian sonetto, from suono, a sound.  It sounds to me like songette (little song).  Maybe the act of moving through nature, the rhythm of walking, invites songs and sonnets. And lyric poetry, and lyrics are words to songs.

Make of my sonnet what you will. Me, I’ll just try to emulate the quarks in my heart and keep walking, into nature, into love. Maybe that’s why I needed to write this, as a reminder to myself of the name of the game.