Song of Two Worlds - Softcover

Lightman, Alan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1597090328 ISBN 13: 9781597090322

Publisher: Red Hen Press, 2017

Synopsis

“VERDICT A vivid and moving book-length narrative poem that places the reader inside of a universe of wonder; of interest to poetry readers and beyond.” ―Library Journal

From the author of international bestseller Einstein's Dreams and National Book Award nominee The Diagnosis.

After decades of living “hung like a dried fly,” emptied and haunted by his past, the narrator, a man who has lost his faith in all things following a mysterious personal tragedy, awakens one morning revitalized and begins a Dante-like journey to find something to believe in, first turning to the world of science and then to the world of philosophy, religion, and human life. As his personal story is slowly revealed, little by little, we confront the great questions of the cosmos and of the human heart, some questions with answers and others without. An exciting new illustrated edition of a unique narrative poem.

About this title

About the Author

Alan Lightman, physicist, essayist, and novelist, is Professor of the Practice of the Humanities at MIT, where he was the first person to receive a joint appointment in the sciences and the humanities. Lightman’s writing has appeared in Harper’s, Salon, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and many other publications. His widely known Einstein’s Dreams was an international bestseller, and his novel The Diagnosis was a finalist for the National Book Award in fiction. His recent book The Accidental Universe was chosen by Brain Pickings as one of the best ten books of the year. He lives in Massachusetts.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

40

Abbas and I shovel sheep dung,
My olive trees hunched
Like a throng of old men―
Sun overhead, I look up
And I gaze at the clouds―

This is the way that I see:
Ten trillion photons of light make their way
Through my pupils each second of time,
Through the oval-shaped lens, through
The jelly-like fill to the retina, hundreds
Of millions of cells, where each photon
Of light meets a molecule, retinene, coaxing
It straight from its twisty vine,
Curled bougainvillea-like. Neurons
Respond to the dance. Protein molecules shift
In their shape, so that sodium cannot find
Passage, electrical charge unrelieved,
Shudder of current moves through
The neurons and flies to the folds of my brain.
Here the fourth layer is sentry, receives
The first tingle, computes a sensation,
And passes its tremblings to five other sheets.
In shards of a second, some hundreds
Of millions of neurons start quivering,
Each being shocked by one thousand others
And doing the same to one thousand more.
Click-click-click sound the firings,
Some punctured and scattered, some synchronized.
Click-click the pulsings in waves―
And my brain tells me “cloud.”
I believe in the knowledge of sight.

About this edition

• Publisher: Red Hen Press
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 1597090328
• ISBN 13: 9781597090322
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 160