Three Sonnets for a Scientist

The Situation

A scientist (of sorts) many years ago , somewhat defensive because his children were tending towards studies in the Humanities and expressed enthusiasm for creative endeavors,  tried to argue that his own profession was artistic in its own way.  What he couldn’t explain to his sons and daughters, he tried to explain to me in terms that were at best superficial romantic cliches.  He was one of those people who read one book, check that it is up-to-date (whatever that means) and takes that as the final word until forced to read the next latest book to come his way. 

If it is spring and flowers bloom again,

as someone  says, when making metaphors,

I wonder at the abstract thoughts, the train

of images, ideas, and words, the cause

of language bursting at its seams, such bloat

of numbers never happening, I’m sure:

for they are orderly, discreet; and tote

the baggage of pure reason, not manure,

Yet shit is necessary, or rotten fish,

or anything decomposing, to create

a portrait or an epic poem—one swish

of color, one dash of rhetoric.  But wait:

we also need proportion, harmony

and measure to make the numbers all agree.

What He Meant To Say

Like other people whose training sets them in opposition to literature, visual arts, music and even theatre, my friend—for in those far off days we were good friends—either try to persuade me to write a popular novel, a play that would immediately be put on stage in some professional theatre, or draw pictures that everyone would understand and love; or, because in his mind it was the same, tell the book shops to stock my latest scholarly tomes, ask the museum to hang my amateur Sunday sketches, or write a letter to the Minister of Art to complain about the neglect shown by various institutions to my execrable verse.

Go home and write a novel: just like that.

Put in your pencil, stick it down your throat,

until you dip into the juices of your heart,

or even form excreta from old thought.

Just anything will do to capture feelings,

and rub them into sentimental crap.

Take fluff from belly-buttons... Flies on ceilings

do upside-down designs digesting pap.

So too mean minstrels impress oracular wax

with epitaphs misunderstood or garbled,

and dancers on their gnarly toes, or stacks

of stunted organ-grinders, all scratch on marbled

arcs de triomphe et passionnât cris du coeur

against injustice or indigestion, like the Moor

who stabbed an infidel and then his faithless whore!

What I Understood

Clearly I could not say to him what I wanted to say, as that would have ended our close relationship earlier than politics eventually did.  You can’t write an actable play unless you read many, watch even more, and spend many years working in the theatre.  You don’t just find a formula for a best-seller novel, not if you have any integrity; again you must read, write many drafts, and become a ruthless critic of your own work.  As for painting or music, skill gets you so far, talent a bit further, and luck perhaps a few steps further, but God knows what chooses the one in ten million artists to become a classical success.

Nick-knacks of the mind, that’s all it is,

These convolutions you expect from us, the poets,

Twisted words and phrases, nothing serious.

And evolutionary apanages.  What’s

The matter, my dear old friend, you claim the core

Of creativity and imagination in your numbers,

An entry into a world of speculation for

Yourself alone, and we are only mumblers,

Pretty thoughts tricked out, rhetoric,

Useless except to while away the time.

Universe of mysteries, the endless tick

Of one apocalypse after another, rhyme

And rhythm down the corridors of space,

So what is left for us, a mirrored carapace?