One of us was once a physicist and came across this poem in New Scientist some time back in the dark ages. The metre of the opening lines has stuck in the memory (and was probably a help in some exam or other).
When a pion an innocent proton seduces
with neither excuses
abuses
nor scorn
for its shameful condition
without intermission
the proton produces:
a neutron is born.
What love have you known,
O neutron full grown,
as you bombinate into the vacuum alone?
Its spin is a half and its mass is quite large
- about one AMU - but it hasn't a charge;
though it finds satisfaction
in strong interaction, it doesn't experience coulombic attraction
But what can it borrow
of love, joy or sorrow
O neutron, when life has so short a tomorrow?
Within its
twelve minutes
comes disintegration
Which leaves an electron in mute desolation
and also another ingenuous proton
for other unscrupulous pions to dote on
and last, a neutrino:
alas, one can see no
fulfilment for such a leptonic bambino -
no loving, no sinning -
just spinning and spinning -
eight times through the globe without a beginning ...
a cycle mechanic -
no anguish or panic -
for such is the pattern of life inorganic.
O better
the fret a
poor human endures
than the neutron's dichotic
robotic
amours.
Gina Berkeley
