The Icelandic Canadian - 01.12.2009, Page 48

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THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
Vol. 62 #3
Poetry
Entanglement1
by Kevin Jon Johnson
Surpassing light is our entanglement -
Attraction at a distance slighting space;
My masculine is to your coyness sent
And instantly opposing it is grace,
But harmony exists in opposites,
The yin and yang embodied in our sex,
And we are one though seeming composite
And many worlds in us intersect.
This rag of time tomorrow will be gone,
And we will meet in Glory face to face;
Eternity is neither short nor long
Such quantities dissolve without a trace.
When time has died, then no one needs to mourn:
The bonds of love transcend all changing forms.
1 Entanglement refers to the verified condition in quantum mechanics
where two particles communicate with each other instantaneously. For
example, a proton on one side of our galaxy may be entangled with an elec-
tron on the opposite side of the galaxy. The proton spins up, and the elec-
tron down, but then together in an instance the proton spins down and the
electron up. This communication far exceeds the speed of light. Newton
noticed such entanglement in gravity “action at a distance,” and Niels Bohr
firmly entrenched the concept of “complementarity” drawn from the oppo-
site but complementary yin and yang of oriental philosophy.
The concept of complementarity explains the wave and particle duality
of light. That “many worlds in us intersect” refers to the multidimensional-
ity of our universe, apparently surpassing the four posited by Einstein in his
relativity theory. While the “conceit” of quantum mechanics shows modern
innovation, the sonnet form and allusions point back to Elizabethan meta-
physical poetry.