THE NON -LOCAL VILLANELLE

 

(The Coleridge Bulletin  New Series No 1 (Winter 1992-93), p. 8)

 

 

"Shall never do away, I ween,"

Said STC of things that sunder,

"The marks of that which once hath been."

 

 

Two quarks that kiss on Halloween

Bear stigmas which the years that plunder

Shall never do away, I ween.

 

 

Non-local laws keep evergreen —

Here Einstein made a minor blunder –

The marks of that which once hath been.

 

 

Now could the poet have foreseen

This quantum principle, I wonder:

"Shall never do away, I ween”...?

 

 

A stranger to the quantum scene,

He grasped the truth that slumbers under

The marks of that which once hath been:

 

 

"A dreary sea now flows between;

But neither heat, nor frost, nor thunder,

Shall wholly do away, I ween,

The marks of that which once hath been."

 

 

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Non-locality is a concept from quantum physics. It says, to put it romantically, that two particles which have once met never forget that meeting, however far apart their fates may carry them.

The last four lines of the villanelle are a straight quotation from Coleridge's "Christabel".

 

Stanley Mason