This Blog Does Not Exist

It was only a question of time before some nutter suggested an -antimatter- blog! (Okay, it might have been me.) And oh, the opportunities afforded under that heading. For instance, there might conceivably be...

...except, of course, there is. Which suggests that matter trumps antimatter - if indeed the latter even exists. Anyway, there is already an excellent blog explaining the whole renegade physics of negative spin and all that unlikely malarkey, posted by my friend Terry Quinn, so I suggest you read that, and I'll concentrate my energies instead on some poetry, old and new.

The old poem was written in 1899 by the American poet William Hughes Meams for his English class at Harvard. You'll probably recognise part of it, for it was set to music as a popular song, recorded by Glenn Miller among others, and is often quoted:

Antigonish

Yesterday, upon the stair,

I met a man who wasn't there!

He wasn't there again today.

Oh how I wish he'd go away!

When I came home last night at three,

The man was waiting there for me

But when I looked around the hall,

I couldn't see him there at all!

Go away, go away, don't you come back anymore!

Go away, go away, and please don't slam the door...

Last night I saw upon the stair

A little man who wasn't there.

He wasn't there again today.

Oh how I wish he'd go away...

And here's more antimatter for a May morning, a new thing of my own devising. Flush with the quiet success of that silent poem ('Can You Hear It? ') a few weeks ago, I thought I'd give antimatter poetry a try. This one is composed in the form of a nonnet*; and because it is the first nonnet ever to be written, I have called it simply:

Nonnet

To begin with, there was no word. Nothing. Nada.

Not a note, not a clue. Not at all helpful. If indeed

there even was a beginning.  We waited for an age

feeling stupid looking awkward. What to do then?

Some speculated  that anti-matter sits at  the heart

of it all, so like Wells' invisible man it has to cloak

itself in matter to make  itself manifest;  otherwise

it's basically hiding  in plain sight.  We articulated

this alternative theory - logically absurd but joyful:

Supposing  all those famous dualists got it wrong,

Professors Yin & Yang, Descartes, the whole gang

banging on about opposites. What is the opposite

of opposite? Ha! We give you unity of the absurd,

as Canon Self's Laughter at the Dearth of Reason

expounds.  Sit down, turn your tape-recorders on.

Lights dim, for at his lectern our greatest shaman, 

about to begin,  checks notes,  cackles with mirth.

*For anyone wishing to attempt this at home, the compositional rules of the nonnet are fiendishly simple: one stanza of nine lines (justified) setting out a thesis, followed by a second stanza of eight lines (justified) positing an antitheses. Presto! (Ha ha ha ha ha.)

Thanks for reading. Come on you Seasiders! S ;-)