“On Lovers and Quarks and All Things that Collide”

Poem by Genevieve Thurtle.

You tell me that

somewhere in Switzerland

they've built a cylinder,

buried underground,

where they hurl two particles

at each other

which collide

and break apart

so that man may see 

the structure

beneath the structure,

the subparticles 

of the subparticles,

and know what God knows.

You don’t like this arrangement,

you say. Too dangerous, too much

possibility of apocalypse, 

of our world being sucked away

by whatever black hole

may or may not result.

But you know I love

what can’t be stopped.

Imagine it:

There we are, 

rounding the arc of that metal tube,

and in the velocity of seeking,

we collide

and break apart

into all of the pieces

that should have a name

but don’t.

And may we be swallowed up.

And may it not be the end of the world.