Tribute to Stephen Hawking, by Michael Carding

A BRIEF HISTORY IN RHYME     (in three parts) by Michael Carding

Solar Sonnet

Aristotle’s nested spheres

Described the universe for years;

Copernicus, in middle age,

Set the sun at centre stage;

Galileo, Kepler too,

Confirmed through telescopic view;

Newton drilled right to the core,

Motion kept within the law.

God and man, creative tension,

Somewhere in the fourth dimension.

Then Einstein steps onto the line

Challenging both Space and Time,

Urging light and thoughts to bend:

When did it start? Where will it end?

Epitaph for Hawking

Time and Space freed from linear finity,

Philosophers and mathematicians out of the box,

Poets break the bonds of metre and rhyme:

Absolute expansion!

If not constrained by wheelchair and communication

Then not constrained.

Insignificant, yet each new thought,

As if from a big bang, ripples and radiates

Into a universe of ideas.

Wave upon wave, increasing energy, ever expanding.

The holy grail of

Relativity reconciled to quantum:

The Treaty of Creation between God and man

Signed in a heavenly black hole.

Coda

Philosophy and physics blend

With poetry, where will it end?

Here and now.

    (Stephen Hawking died 14^th March 2018)

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