THE NON -LOCAL VILLANELLE
(The Coleridge Bulletin New Series No 1 (Winter 1992-93), p. 8)
"Shall never do away, I ween,"
Said STC of things that sunder,
"The marks of that which once hath been."
Two quarks that kiss on Halloween
Bear stigmas which the years that plunder
Shall never do away, I ween.
Non-local laws keep evergreen —
Here Einstein made a minor blunder –
The marks of that which once hath been.
Now could the poet have foreseen
This quantum principle, I wonder:
"Shall never do away, I ween”...?
A stranger to the quantum scene,
He grasped the truth that slumbers under
The marks of that which once hath been:
"A dreary sea now flows between;
But neither heat, nor frost, nor thunder,
Shall wholly do away, I ween,
The marks of that which once hath been."
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Non-locality is a concept from
quantum physics. It says, to put it romantically, that two particles which have
once met never forget that meeting, however far apart their fates may carry
them.
The last four lines of the
villanelle are a straight quotation from Coleridge's "Christabel".