Ode
To Science # 9
To
Stephen Hawking
Stephen
Hawking,
locked for years now,
in a disabled body,
(he has Motor
Neurone Disease),
has
fought himself over his disability
and refused the bitter escape into religion
others have fallen into.
With a
mind that has touched the infinite limits
of
space and time,
he does not believe
in
Taoist fantasies or
Jesus and Buddha;
he does not sound a ritual gong
to announce himself before lectures;
he does not see Zen emptiness
behind everyday phenomena in life;
he does
not swing myrrh censers at
Byzantine ceremonies.
Unable even to talk, except though
an amazing computer attached
to his wheel chair, he is the only man
I know of who is able to say
that Einstein wasn’t that good at Math.
Despite his restricted isolation
he
joins no monastery
and does not condemn the
the misnamed “secular world”.
There is no real spiritual/secular distinction,
as if the two terms were equal.
Only the secular is real,
only the earth and sky matter.
Non-existent spiritual worlds do not trouble him.
It amazes me that
science has so infused him
that he has not been tempted to see himself
as a crucified Christ.
I like this kind of poetry against poetry.
It is poetic justice leveled against the
lies poetry has told for millennia
Unable even to talk, except though
an amazing computer attached
He’s no love-sick Rumi
longing for an non-existant lover behind the sky.
He
accepts the facts of his hard existence
with a certain humor that reaches
from Kew Gardens
to far distant Black Holes.
In him, science has finally defeated religion.
Hawking as said
"We are such insignificant creatures
on a minor planet of a very average star
in the outer suburb of one of a hundred
billion galaxies.
So it is difficult to believe in a God
that would care about us
or even notice our existence."
Yes,
The fabric of species on earth
is amazing and self-generated.
Precisely because there is no god
species alone deserve the credit
of having arisen through evolution
on our own.
On our
own!! Think of that—we did it ourselves!!!
Life needs no fictional gods to begin or to continue!!
We need no priests to direct us.
A man in wheel chair is humble enough
to look truthfully at the stars.
We are the self-created, the self-perpetuated,
the proud children of a spherical-sapphire
of the sapphirical earth.
Hawking
loves his daughter and math and
the mystery of existence
and that is enough for him.
I
admire his clear mind and doubt
he would want me to praise his “courage”.
I admire his hard struggle with a self-pity
which he has not yet conquered
even though he often pretends his self pity is not thtere.
He has refused to turn his bodily sufferings
into a metaphor for a “spiritual” hatred or the world.
He shows me the poetry of a world
that is not metaphorical:
he enables me to imagine
a poetry without metaphor:
the plain rhymeless poetry of science.
