Speaking Metaphor Poem by Mary Champion

At the quantum level -
that no-man's land between spirit and matter,
where the Word undergoes its slow metamorphosis
becoming the too, too solid flesh that weighs so heavy now,
the laws of physics begin to lose shape
as mathematics gives way to metaphor.
Cats in boxes - dead or alive.
Non-local entanglement.
Waves, strings and streams of consciousness.
It is here that Science must reforge its alliance with Poetry
if it is to understand.

At the start of our journey,
before we had begun to mine mathematics -
even then -
we were always driven by our obsession to understand.

But the only language we had was pidgin metaphor -
incomplete and partial, yet a comforting beginning -
Trees of life.
Warring and petulant gods.
Monsters that swallowed the sun at dusk.
Lost Edens.
Utopias to be built.
Serpentine double helix disrupting our destiny.

Then Science constructed its increasingly precise picture of the universe,
firmly rooted in mathematics,
until we thought we understood the whole of Reality.
But then we came up against the flaws -
the holes in our theories -
puzzles impervious to numbers.

It is time for Science to make a partner of Poetry,
to translate its findings into perfect metaphors
and to finally understand our Mother-tongue.

It is at this point that Humanity will come into its own,
to defeat the machines.
For only the fully sentient
will ever be fluent in the language of metaphor.