Tag: jupiter

  • Ode to Jupiter (II)

    Down
    Down through towers
    And towers of clouds
    The pressure of the red spot glowers
    at what?
    You’ve penetrated further than you thought.

    And there’s no ground.

    A lamp receding in a pit
    The hull grew green, dim,
    buckled,
    split,
    winked out.

  • Ode to Jupiter (I)

    Richard Feynman:

    “If you are a good enough poet to write an ode to an immense spinning sphere of methane and ammonia, you are writing something original, about a newly discovered part of the real universe. It may not be as dramatic, or as gripping, as Hamlet. But the tale of Hamlet has already been told! If you write of Jupiter as though it were a human, you are making our map of the universe just a little more impoverished of complexity; you are forcing Jupiter into the mold of all the stories that have already been told of Earth.

    Me: [With apologies to William McGonagall]

    Oooooooo
    Beautiful spinning sphere of ammonia and methane
    Which has nothing remotely resembling a brain
    Literally just a ball of gas
    That still deserves respect due to its mass.

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