"Broken Symmetry" by John C. Mannone

Broken Symmetry
John C. Mannone

I can’t tell how many times

physics has birthed a poem

on my ledger of equations.

Obscure letters, x’s and chi’s,

dissolve into words as precisely

as they do in mathematics,

in theorems. Abstractions

transform into more abstractions,

yet there is a tangibility to them.

They have congruent similarity,

a mathematician might say.

There is beauty in symmetry

even after it is broken, as in

the universe of atoms, of stars,

of love and of us. But I tell you,

the converse,

physics is born of poetry, too.

Note the way the words break,

flow into new dimensions.

Even Poe, the surgeon of letters

with no bedside manner, knew

the nighttime universe should

blaze. He knew the fickle

goddess of light hadn’t brought it

to our eyes yet. I’m still waiting

for her, for the beauty of physics—

her face still lovely, even broken

in the dark, in uneven light.

Poet’s Notes: I continue to write poetry that fuses with science and mathematics. There’s an opportunity to explore a new source of metaphor.