William Spencer
The Gyres, The Gyres!
It's a curly world -
Think what would happen
If things ran straight:
Winds blew blatantly north to south
Disdaining to curl in vortices
Weather always the same
At a given latitude
So predictable, so boring.
Instead, a touch of Chaos comes
To stir the pot.
Even the whirling galaxies
Their streaming filaments awash
Like a blonde girl's hair swirling
When she turns her head quickly
- Those beauties couldn't have formed
But for curliness.
If all particles shot outwards
Seriously straight from the Big Bang
Stubbornly refusing to be deflected
We wouldn't be around
To know the difference
Because there wouldn't be any difference
To notice.
Look how life itself
Depends on curliness -
It's there in the DNA
See how it curls, and recurls
Like a string twisted so tightly
It coils back on itself.
And what makes things curl?
It's love, of course
Or gravity, to use the proper scientific term.
Love of one particle for another
Creates anomalies for each
Pulls them off course, makes them behave absurdly
Deflects them from the linear path
So obviously their right and proper track.
Of this quixotic love, the stars are born
The stuff of worlds is formed
And we, late in the scheme of things, emerge
To blink and marvel.
All due to curliness.
So please - never give it me straight
Never look me straight in the eye
And tell me everything is straightforward
And I'm the one who's complicating things.
Page(s) 68-69
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The