apple

You there, yes, you,
checking out your hairdo
with your books begging to the opened
or your totes from Thomas’
cutting across this triskeled campus,
teacher or seeker or refugee looking for a rest
along the rocky road of resistance,
stand still for a moment and see beyond yourself,
your day, your demands, beyond all these fleeting reflections,
stand here, in the stillness of our spinning space
and see Einstein’s apple orbiting all that has now become known as Nobel,
in the almost saturated silence listen out to the whispers
that first became wit and then became wonder,
that gave Walton reasons to ponder.
See multiples of yourselves
in these spheres as singular blocks
building on our ability to be better beings,
to give more meaning to all this matter, here,
in these courtyards of conversations
housing halls now held in high esteem.
Can you see, within these curves of light leaning,
along these lines of longitude cutting through latitudes,
the circles through which we navigate,
the atoms, the Adams, the objects,
the Eves, the masses pushing outwards,
the energy pressing inwards, the people passing on.
Stop, for a moment and release all that you were
and make a place for all that you will become.

The atoms came first and then we bit into the apple.
I wonder if it made us any brighter, lighter?
When you look into these globes, do you see a reflection
of all our energy or is it a projection of what is still to come?

All words by Damien B. Donnelly

Photograph taken from the internet of Apples and Atoms, a sculpture by Eilís O’Connell at Trinity College, Dublin, commemorating Ernest T S Walton (1903-95), physicist and Nobel laureate and the first person in history to artificially split the atom.

How did they mess it up

So soon after that first breath,

So new to this life,

With all and everything

There

In front of them,

Under their naked feet,

At the end of their finger tips?

How did they not see

The wealth they wore

Instead of clothes,

The peace they had

Within the walls of paradise?

How could they let that

Deluge of distraction

Descend upon their divinity

And denounce their demise

So disastrously?

And yet, here we are-

For centuries foreigners

To those famous fields

Of golden innocence,

Slithering about,

Nothing less

Than slivering serpents-

One and all,

Sadistic and sarcastic,

Overly self-indulgent,

Remarkably self-centered

And so far removed

From those gardens

Of primordial delight

That we’ve lost sight

Of the very suggestion

That this singular sin

Conceived.

We’ve neglected

To remind ourselves

Of the consistently

Concentric consequences

Of the first bite into

Lust and longing,

Pride and power.

History is no more

Than a slinky sling,

Sliding down the steps of time

And repeating its repulsion’s

Again and again,

As we watch on

As if it’s the first time,

As if it’s a shock,

As if we knew no better,

As if we were the first to fumble,

As if we were Adam and Eve-

Caught innocently

With mouths open-

That luscious piece of apple

Barely resting-

As yet undigested-

On our tongue,

As if we had no guidance,

Like we had never learned

How to divide

Right from wrong.

And yet,

If we could only look back

We’d see it was as easy

As that first divide

Of Man from Paradise

Or that even clearer division

Of Adam and Eve.

Damien B. Donnelly

ATOMS

After Eden