Of These the Infinite

A STRAIGHT line is an honest thing,
And simple, too.
It has one only song to sing,
One deed to do.
Though light-years be its range,
It will not bend, it traffics not with change.

A circle is sublime.
Forever, point by point, it wills to swerve,
Holds hard its helm through space,
Its arc through time.
The constant coefficient of its curve
Brings self-completion at the appointed place,
Giving the rigid universe its grace,
The lonesome word its rhyme.

Strangest of all, the point:
Made without seam or joint
Or surface, but within it hides
All substance that abides.
Monadic, terse,
Its nebulae unwind
In spirals to compose the universe
Which, though it twist
In luminous mist,
Derives its being only from the mind.

The point all quantity denies,
But quantum-like it lies
At every center. Circles cannot turn
Unless midway across the span
They hold the point whose locus none may learn,
Not even man.
No wheel can roll
Except it plant, each moment on the ground,
A point that is a fulcrum for the whole,
And yet turns round.

A point says, “Here!”
With what assurance and finality,
The while its mocking counterpoint, its “There!”
Sanctions its right to be.

A point is so intense
Crouched in a needle’s end
It can awaken sense.
But it was said
By doctors some time dead,
The point could so extend
As to become a floor
On which the angels dance: one, two, — and more.
And now, before you smile,
Reflect awhile:
The doctors of today
Have this to say,
That at the point of nuclear embrace
Electrons, face to face,
Remain apart, yet fill the self-same space.