Welcome to the blog! I have been mulling over a few ideas for topics to kick off this blog when I saw today that an excellent science communicator and YouTuber, going by the name c0nc0rdance, made a video spotlighting a poem written by the Polish poet and Nobel Laureate Wisława Szymborska-Włodek. The poem is called "Maybe All This" and it was first published in the New Yorker in 1992 where it soon became one of her most well known pieces. The poem itself is excellent, and the author herself is inspirational; so, I can think of no better way to start off this blog than to present to you her poem.
MAYBE ALL THIS
Maybe all this
is happening in some lab?
Under one lamp by day
and billions by night?
Maybe we're experimental generations?
Poured from one vial to the next,
shaken in test tubes,
not scrutinized by eyes alone,
each of us separately
plucked up by tweezers in the end?
Or maybe it's more like this:
No interference?
The changes occur on their own
according to plan?
The graph's needle slowly etches
its predictable zigzags?
Maybe thus far we aren't of much interest?
The control monitors aren't really plugged in?
Only for wars, preferably large ones,
for the odd ascent above our clump of earth,
for major migrations from Point A to Point B?
Maybe just the opposite:
They've got a taste for trivia up there?
Look, on the big screen a little girl
is sewing a button on her sleeve.
The radar shrieks,
the staff comes at a run.
What a darling little being
with its tiny heart beating inside it!
How sweet its solemn
threading of the needle!
Someone cries, enraptured,
Get the Boss,
tell him he's got to see this for himself!
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