ANNUS MIRABILIS

	by Bedros Afeyan


	In 1905, as Armenian villages slept in Anatolia
	Vaguely suspicious of coming escalations in atrocities
	Invitations being readied to be evicted of their vibrancy,
	Forced marches to the Syrian desert
	To starve, to be raped and shot
	To perish for all eternity
	Branded by Genocide's call
	An Imperial Ottoman decree
	Executed by the Young Turks of the Ittihadist Party

	A Swiss patent office clerk revolutionized the pace
	And essence of scientific discovery
	Bypassing the halls of exulted Academe
	Stagnant in drops of self importance and mortal rivalry.

	He said light has a constant speed not to be surpassed
	And aether is imaginary puff to be dismissed
	So time could dilate and space shrivel
	If only you could chase your shadow on the wings
	Of a light beam's journey through vacuum's glee.

	He said molecules were real, Brownian motion could attest to this
	No life force, no motive nonsense
	Just jittery tiny entities collectively en prises.

	He said electrons were particles and so were photons,
	Light came in discrete bundles don't you see,
	Planck had it right in 1900, however preliminarily
	But the consequences would be revolutionary.

	There came quantum mechanics, relativity, statistical mechanics
	Atomistic and free of mystic misery
	There came energy and matter equivalence
	Atomic weapons, lasers, and global GPS systems in every SUV
	And more and more uncertainty

	There came the Armenian genocide, the Jewish holocaust
	And World wars to the brink of three.

	Einstein made physics Aristotelian again,
	Not just affixed to observational tyranny.

	He imagined how God might think,
	How he would make a universe blink
	Given a waste paper basket
	A pen and enough ink.

	Physics thrived and humanity rejoiced
	A hundred years hence
	Particles became strings, branes
	And 11 dimensional in their wing spans

	But how much less barbaric are we
	After Cambodia, Bosnia, Somalia, Rwanda
	And Darfur, Sudan aujourdhui?
	For all Einstein the pacifist taught us
	To dream, to imagine and soar on the wings
	of field equations tensorial yet free.

	Pleasanton, CA
	02-05-2005


--
Dr. Bedros Afeyan is a theoretical physicist who works and lives in
the Bay area with his wife, Marine. He writes in Armenian and in
English and also paints and sculpts. Samples of his work can be found
on the web by clicking on his personal web pages at:
http://208.177.152.139/