My Lo d, I will w it  you a way
th ough th  willows,
wh    that old jok   th  mo  po k
—midnight’s da k sta —
still sings th  song of its lf;

a song to b ing you back to this plac ,
to a  oadsid  monum nt of conc  t  and ma bl , 
clad in  os s (blooming y llow now)
and a vin  of ivy that twists a ound
th  coat of a ms ca v d fo  you on th  wall

wh    H  m s T ism gistus and a Mao i chi f
stand s ntin l
b fo   a sp ay of  glinting moons.

*

A way that will b ing you back th ough th  alphab t
and so   sto  , my Lo d,
(restore, my Lord)
the ghost of the letters to your name—
that rise like plumes of radiation,
the unseen energies
drifting from the half-life tombs of lead
and shafts of deep strata casing
—Rokkasho, Sellafield, Yucca Mountain—
(etc, my Lord)

or the letters scattered in your scattering formula—
the e that is electron charge,

the r that stands for ‘target-to-detector distance’—

those energies drifting across the Pacific
and all the other test sites
where the world has fallen
through the holes in its languages

—its sweet languages—

*

And so restore you to the orchards and rose gardens
of this midnight village,
to bring you back
through the atom’s great empty spaces—

a way I will imagine for you
to weave among the orbiting electrons
(the trick is to zig when they zag, my Lord,
as a wise man once said)—

or to be like the silence
that hangs between two drops of rain
falling on the roofing iron

the intervals of space that give form
to the structures of 
almost nothing.

*

Though why I should want to raise you 
from the dead, my Lord, 
to have you step out of that ‘low joke’ 
that is death
and back under the big blue sky, 
and look both ways into these fragments 
of a life that is not quite—
the old road running east across the river,
the sweet smell of hay 
in the paddocks of Spring Grove,

why should I wish to do this?—
if not to say that you were the one
who wanted to know 
too much

who gave radiation its alphabet

—those ancient letters—

and unlocked the thunder from its box . . .

*

which was made of brass
back in those days of handmade instruments
and scintillation screens

and test tubes glowing eerie (   i , my Lo d,)

a box you filled with nitrogen
to fire alpha particles (helium nuclei, source: radon gas)

into the architecture of matter . . .

*

it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the long- 
range atoms arising from collision of [alpha] 
particles with nitrogen are not nitrogen but probably 
atoms of hydrogen . . .  If this be the case, we must 
conclude the nitrogen atom is disintegrated

On the side of caution, or on the risky side—

to err, my Lord, is only human

though was it error, my Lord (   o , my Lo d)

(or was it superhuman?)—
to seek the philosopher’s stone
and show the pursuit of alchemy
not the stuff of dreams
and prove an ancient poet both right and wrong—
for somewhere in The Rose Garden
—or was it The Orchard, my Lord?—
Saadi, the Sufi master, says

the alchemist dies in sorrow and frustration 
while the fool finds beauty in a ruin

*

Beauty in a ruin,
or in a worn-out holey boot—
there are form and disorder in both, my Lord—

as in the laws of thermodynamics, let’s say, energy shifts 
from thing to thing, 
as a ghost might slip away—though: 
in any process, the total energy of the universe remains at large 
and disintegrates, becomes th  shap -chang r 
that re-forms itself in another turn of the wheel

as in these letters for you, my Lord,
I see your shade slip away again,
things shift, the poem completes its circle—
wh r in th  first l tt r falls from th  lin  again

losing its plac  as th  l av s in autumn
will flutt r down from th  willows of your childhood riv r

and slip through th  airy atoms of th  simpl  chap l,
th  villag  susp nd d in cold moonlight 
and th  first wint r frost falling in str  ts and all ys

and in th  f ost falling
th  oth   l tt  ’s lost, my Lo d,

lost and uns  n
it  adiat s th ough th   mpty  xpanding spac s    
of th   ndl ss univ  s
out th ough th  v ss l of  n  gi s—
of all that is and  v   was 
and  v   t i d to b

—and all that always wants to b —

and n v   to b  gon —

my Lo d.