Verses On Our Universe Poem by Biswajit Basu

In the beginning of Creation,
At the beginning of the very beginning,
Before there came space and time,
Floating free in a primeval void,
In a Dimension unknown,
Was effervescence infinitesimally small,
But of immense solidity, unimaginably intense,
Of matter unknown,
There by the nature of its own existence,
On rules shaped by entities beyond,
Far, far beyond
The grasp of the human mind.

II
Deep in the womb of this miniscule bubble,
For reasons unknown,
There was a stirring
To create a new Universe,
In a new dimension
Thus waves of disturbance beginning,
A trembling tempo rising,
Caused energy waves so profound,
That rising in synergistic unison,
Generated an intensity so explosive,
That ripped it asunder,
With a violence unimaginable,
In a silent monumental eruption,
Of blinding primal radiation,
Mightier than a trillion supernovae.

III
In the aftermath
Of this awesome fury,
In that instant of the moment,
Where infinity meets eternity,
Shot through this void,
Undulating waves,
Bolts of formless energy,
Into this spaceless abyss,
Wavelike, massless particles
Intensely suffused and ghostly,
Silently expanding wraithlike,
Radiating into eternal blackness.

IV
As this fiery energy dispersed,
Over distances unfathomable,
Streaking through this emptiness,
It made its own space,
With time as a sister,
And as its companion,
To journey the vast distances,
To destinations unknown.
Time passed in this spatial void,
And this intense energy,
Dense with varied radiation,
Catalysed by the God Particle,
Coalesced into solidity,
Forming huge volatile masses,
Growing to stupendous sizes,
Some imploding upon themselves,
In a maelstrom of violence,
Forming in its trail,
Heavenly Galaxies, Supernovae,
Stars and Nebulae innumerable;
Creating a veritable firmament
With a violence that continues
To persist in our present times.

V
Emanating from these entities
Were myriad radiations,
Some of which glowed, as if alive;
And visible in their splendour.
This medley of radiation,
Suffusing through this universe,
As massless particles of wave energy,
Random and wayward,
Caught in the warp
Of the expanding universe,
Enveloped time and space,
In a single dimensional unity.
And photons of this energy,
Shooting through,
In bolts of lightning speed
Lit up the Universe,
Aeons ago.

VI
Yet these photons,
Streaming over vast distances,
Could illuminate the senses,
Of beings: human or mechanical.
But only an infinitesimal part,
Of these immense clumps of matter,
Could so be illuminated,
By photons and its brethren waves.
Thus, unknown to our senses,
But diffused randomly
Over the vast interstellar spaces,
Enormous amounts of matter lie,
In ethereal strands of invisible filaments,
Floating wispily, unseen, unheard,
A Dark Matter with Dark Energy as its creator,
Undetectable by man,
And smiling at his incredulity.

VII
Yet the other part, palpable
Sensed and concrete,
Floated in this void,
Forming stars and galaxies,
In the way that nature,
By rules it propounds,
Bound by the physics of forces
Created with our Universe,
Forming oases of immense masses,
In this endless void,
And appeared in the firmament,
To glitter till the end of time.

VIII
Some of these masses,
Coalesced from radiation,
Caught in the dynamic warp of spacetime,
Settled down to their natural purpose
Through interaction over aeons,
Created a myriad of matter forms.
Amongst the trillions of such galaxies,
So far-flung that space between is immeasurable.
And formed by this cataclysmic evolution,
Was a galaxy shaped like a beautiful spiral,
A miniature Universe by itself,
Which we now call the Milky Way.

IX
Like an ugly wart,
On the face of this lovely galaxy,
Was a malevolent entity,
A terrible and hungry Black Hole,
So gluttonous that it devoured everything,
Even massless radiation,
Excreting all into dimensional time warp.
And nothing could escape,
This invisible, evil monstrous bully,
As it rotated slowly
In anticipation of its next starry meal.
But far-flung and thus benignly safe,
Embedded in an insignificant arm,
Of the Milky Way,
Was a cloud of dense gas,
That with an inexplicable suddenness,
Fell upon itself; coalescing as it did
Into a volatile spinning star,
Slated to be our sun,
Beset by a perpetual nuclear fusion
Glowing with intense photonic radiation,
Looking forth to spew forth its influence.
It watched with some satisfaction,
As the remnants of the cloud,
Arched into a single swirling disc
Which solidified into the planets,
Forming a spinning, gyrating system
Caught by the awesome gravity,
Enslaving them to orbit the central sun.

X
Thus was formed,
Our Solar System of Planets
Revolving around this sun,
And in this miniscule section of the Milky Way
Itself a miniscule fleck of visible matter,
In a dark and endless void of space,
Created a system so exquisite,
Like, perhaps a billion others,
Of planets orbiting a glowing star
With geometric precision,
Enslaved to a metronomic gyration till
The central sun devours it,
In a beautifully spectacular performance
Of mindless destruction.

XI
As masses like this,
Settled down in colonies
Began to form bonds
With those that they bordered,
Much influenced by proximate brethren
And in one of the satellites,
Flung aside like a useless, ragged doll,
Was our planet Earth,
Spinning angularly on its axis,
Like a ballerina's pirouette,
While circling around the sun,
Which was itself gyrating,
In the spiral arms of the Milky Way.

XII
Peace in this cosmic realm,
Was brutally shattered
When orbits intersecting,
A wandering planet,
Collided with Earth,
With a feral ferocity
That tore from its innards,
And disembowelled from its belly,
Birthing a smaller spinning sphere
Flung out in violence
Which, caught in Earth's gravity,
Began its metronomic orbit,
As a satellite of mother Earth,
Which humans later,
Would call the Moon.

XIII
Billions of years pass,
And on this earth,
Shaped by the Laws of Nature,
Initiated a reaction of its contents,
Forming atoms and molecules,
And caused by chemical combination,
Of two elemental gases
Was water born.
And this water,
Which, created in gross abundance,
Ranged over the surface of the earth,
In a volatile liquid mantle.

XIV
And nurtured by the heat of the Sun,
By the churning of its own contents
Or perhaps by a cosmic intervention
When one straying mass,
Finds, after a million years,
A brother separated at birth,
Catalysed such a chemistry,
That evolved in this water,
To create a primeval sludge
Of matter that came to be,
On the verge of the living.
Then, in a stroke of the mysterious,
In a way eternally inexplicable,
Wherein probably lies,
The Great Truth of our Universe,
Caused such a mixture to form
That by the warmth of the sun,
Was infused with life,
And in a cosmic dance of multiplication,
Ebulliently replicated itself,
Suffusing all around it
With the subtle elements
Of a mystifying consciousness
That we call life.

XV
Millions of years pass,
And a natural philosophy evolved,
That only those that are never born,
Are destined never to die.
And yet in this Universal realm,
Even death, is but a passing phase,
In a mandated quantum transformation,
That nothing is ever so utterly obliterated,
That, transformed, it cannot exist again.
Thus change, volatile and turbulent,
Lies fundamental in Universal philosophy,
The Earth evolves.
Mountains and plains,
Seas and vegetation,
Travel thousands of miles,
Even as the earth rumbles,
In thunderous quakes,
That shakes the very core,
Of our turbulent world.
Movements are vast,
Continents collide,
Throwing up mountains,
At places the sea bottom rises,
Into the dry air above,
To bathe in the light,
Streaming in from the sun.

XVI
Hidden away,
The conscious beings,
Evolving with nature,
And assuming higher forms,
Swam the vast oceans,
Of this rich, primeval soup.
And these living beings,
Seeking the warmth of the sun,
Now having grown to stupendous sizes,
Adapted their swimming fins,
To walk the dry land.
Having so done,
Living in the midst,
Of boundless forests,
They foraged thereon,
And some assumed gargantuan forms,
With fodder from these vast green tracts.
But some creatures adapted,
To the life of those times,
By staying small and meek,
Not knowing that destiny had ordained
That they would, one day
Inherit our planet.

XVII
Unexpectedly then, a small asteroid,
A mere rock, passing nearby
Entered the sky of planet Earth.
And the huge foraging beasts,
Looking skyward could not discern,
This ominous rock
Looming over them
Like the Sword of Damocles.
And in a cataclysmic moment,
It entered the atmospheric mantle,
Friction burning it,
Like a celestial torch of doom,
It crashed on the surface of the earth,
Sending up vast spirals of dust,
Awesome to behold,
That blackened the sky,
Obliterating the rays
Of the life-giving Sun,
Triggering great earthquakes,
That swelled the sea,
Into stupendous waves,
That crashed on shores,
Wiping out, large swaths,
Of land and of forests,
And all living beings therein.
And the sky became dark,
Day became endless night,
And the remaining forests,
Mostly died away,
Lacking sustenance
For dearth of heat and light
From their life-giving sun.

XVIII
The huge beasts,
That inhabited this world,
Knowing not what happened,
Conscious only of a craving,
To stay alive in this catastrophe,
Ranged far and wide,
But everywhere was a night
A darkness of death,
And the forests quickly dwindled,
Deprived of the sun's heat and light,
Till there was no food
For the larger beings
That roamed the land,
And they lay down,
And of hunger, died.
But the smaller life,
Needing lesser to subsist,
Held on tenaciously,
To their meagre lives,
And propagating their species,
In a frenzy of evolution,
Mutated gradually to the new
System on earth.
Then, slowly the dust settled,
Verdant forests reappeared,
And these smaller beings,
Gradually found themselves,
In the midst of plenty,
And hence prospered.

XIX
One such species,
Ape-like in demeanour,
Who survived the holocaust,
By dint of its adaptability,
To cope with the
New order that was,
Benign and exuberant,
Procreated rampantly,
Populating this world,
Dominating their fellow creatures,
With whom they shared the earth.
Then, as years passed,
These dextrous beings,
By dint of their intelligence,
Leapt to the evolutionary fore,
And evolving as humans
Produced their own food
And lived in communal harmony,
Spending their lives, adapting,
Caring, healing and in industry,
Understanding their life,
In increasingly sophisticated perception,
In music, dance and other arts,
Communicating with each other,
In sound and by inscription,
Sped ahead of the other species
Prodigiously accelerating with
An insatiable thirst for knowledge,
Of their natural world.
Sometimes they looked up to see,
The stars in the sky,
Wondrous and glittering,
And realised that the ground they stood on,
Was a mere dot,
In the infinity of the sky
And surmised that the eternal,
Secret Truth of the Universe,
And revelation of the mystery
Of their own creation,
Lay hidden in that endless firmament.
But in their quest for knowledge,
To deviously survive in the world
That was of their own making,
They also learnt to be evil.

XX
But do these human beings,
Evolving from a sludgy soup
Conceived only in an event of near impossibility,
By which conscious life was created,
That self-adapts rapidly by mutation,
To higher and higher genetic forms,
Know that on the cosmic quantum scale,
Reality merges into illusion, and
Their planet is but an infinitesimal blue dot
In just their Solar System
Which is but a particle of stardust
Far in a dark corner of the Milky Way
In itself one of a trillion galaxies,
In our stupendous Universe?
Will they ever remember,
That all their creations,
From all their industry,
Wrought assiduously over millions of years,
Shall be rendered into naught
And be forever destroyed,
As the Sun shall devour them,
And spin on even as it withers
In the suicidal throes
As it consumes itself
Into an insignificant mass,
Within the spinning spirals,
Of our Galaxy?

XXI
A time will come thereafter,
When this great galaxy,
Of the Milky Way
That we revere as our own,
Will vanish forever,
Spiralling into the central Black Hole,
That had only snacked,
On minor stars that crossed its path
Whilst it has lain in wait,
For billions of years,
Like a patient vulture,
For that gargantuan meal,
To consume the Milky Way,
Thus eating itself,
In a cannibalistic frenzy
That is probably destined
To be its last supper.

XXII
And the remnants of our Universe,
Will go on draining its immense energy,
In mindless expansive flight
For trillions of years
That finally merges into infinity of time and space.
Maybe instead, it may come to such pass,
Our Universe may enter another Dimension
And merge with it in a marriage of convenience,
In a cyclic dance of existence.
Or mayhap, the end will come,
When the Dark Energy fuelling this cosmic flight
Of our Universe is utterly exhausted
From its seemingly purposeless endeavours,
To continue this epic outward journey,
And thus brings it to an abrupt halt.
Then starting again,
From a deathly Universal stillness,
Slowly reversing its motion,
Sucked back by universal gravity
Accelerating, it will begin to compact,
Spiralling into itself
Imploding to compress all matter,
Into an awesome density,
And enter into an unknown realm,
Perhaps, to deliver this Universe,
Into the bowels of another.

XXIII
To discover the Singular Truth:
The reason for all Creation,
Scientists will toil on,
Philosophers will cerebrate,
With their pitifully miniscule minds
To unravel this complex simplicity.
But unheedingly, the Divine Play will continue,
And the cycle will begin once more,
As the Eternal Dance of Impermanence,
Manifests itself,
When a bubble of immense solidity,
Of matter unknown,
Feels the stirring in its womb,
To start a new creation
Which will yet again,
Explode in silent fury,
In eternal cyclical repetition,
To create a New World,
In a New Universe.