1.
Heisenberg observed the ouroboros
swallow its tail & disappear, bite its tongue
& die of poison. A lonely creature, it bore no offspring.
Never spoke, suffered from housemaid’s knee & was tragically confused
with the wheel. Its anatomy, the taxonomy of the void, the allure of the
ambiguous infinite, filled his doctorate thesis… “Don’t expect
a solution or a cutting of the knot, this is as close,”
he wrote, “as you get to eternity –
“No midway or death ride or girlie show
not a speck of cotton candy will blow your way;
no underground rivers bubbling bitumen, no peeling skies
digesting tallow behind the glass of immortality, chez Mme. Tussaud.”
2.
Wind rages in H.‘s hollow tooth.
Bipedal, upright, uncertain just looking
out the window; his each ascent, an infinite concision
from intransigence & malady straight to the Sea of No Return…
“Sly as a slug & transparent, what‘s nothing is too large to be seen.
Count backwards from infinity, pass zero…Stuck in
hindsight the lie persists as propaganda –
absolute zero doesn‘t exist.
“A paper ship wasted by the tide
it‘ll drown in a creek that couldn‘t flood
a mosquito‘s slipper. Save your anti-matter for the
Latter Days. Strictly black tie, metaphysics is never cheap.”
3.
Last Dante saw him (at the laundromat, freshening
his tights) Heisenberg was rehearsing an aria for the Swedish king.
“The indefinite trajectory of a tennis ball & the impossibility to simultaneously
measure its exact position & momentum…”
Eyes closed, crowing like a rooster
the tune he knows by heart, hogtied in Hell, he remains equivocal about
oblivion’s victory. A hit with Swedes, Alibi for Gustaf
got Heisenberg the Nobel Prize in ‘32.
The royal klutz keeps chasing the ball,
Heisenberg still lectures at The Emerods & Toothache
School of Dance. On perpetual repeat
down where roots go.
Silently.
Famed for the Uncertainty Principle, Werner Heisenberg was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1932 by Gustaf V, who played tennis hidden under the pseudonym Mr. G.
_______
Marty Newman was born in Czechoslovakia, raised in Montreal, Canada & educated at McGill University. He made aliyah in 1985 & lives in Jerusalem where he studies ancient languages & texts. The modern poets he admires most are Dan Pagis, Richard Wilbur, Zbigniew Herbert & Vasko Popa.
Marty’s poems appear in the Fall 2025 issue of NEW SQUARE LITERARY MAGAZINE (Trinity College, Dublin); they also appear in the Jan. 2025 issue (CK 31:1) of COMMON KNOWLEDGE (published by Duke University), in IMAGE Journal, in The RARITAN Quarterly Review (Rutgers University) & in Britain, in STAND Magazine (Leeds University).