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Newton to Atlas


Student of Trinity

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The sonnet version:

 

He hangs in his balloon above the cliff

That is the titan’s ear to hear his call,

Sir Isaac shouting down his sermon: If

You throw it high enough it will not fall.

Awake at last for one last do or die,

Great Atlas shudders, straightens out his back,

And shoves with all his might against the sky.

Earth rocks. The sky flies clear. Blue fades to black.

Whether it’s strain that kills him, or respite,

The titan crumbles, shattered with his hopes.

Cold Newton might have wept, but look: what light!

He drifts off rapt, inventing telescopes,

As peasants wail, to watch horizons flee.

Dead Atlas lies there still, too big to see.

 

The quatrain version:

 

Newton stands just off the mountain shoulder,

Tiny beneath his sphere of silk and heat

As it is, to the weathered head of stone

Hunching, dwarfed, beneath its endless pain.

 

Hanging below his balloon, in his tiny gondola,

Small as a hovering gnat, who hears his call?

Sir Isaac shouts till his sermon echoes: If

You throw it high enough it will not fall.

 

Huge crusts of rock crack, slide and plummet, as

Vast eyelids open on an ancient stare.

The mountain's every atom moves as one,

To burn the strength of ages in one flare.

 

Earth rocks as Atlas pushes, stands, and shoves.

Peasants stagger in fields as horizons flee.

The sky flies clear, escapes, will not come back.

The titan bursts his heart, and he falls headlong.

 

Cold Newton almost weeps, but glances up.

The stars have caught his eyes.

He drifts off rapt, inventing telescopes.

Dead Atlas lies there still, too big to see.

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I have tinkered and toyed with this thing for ten years, more or less. It exists in three forms, as a sonnet, in quatrains that mostly don't rhyme, and as something formless. I find things to like and dislike about all three versions. I should probably combine them somehow.

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