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Rare reader , a communication channel exists between the two of us. That's nothing new in this electronic age but the odd thing about our mutual situation is that we are exercising processes
inherited over the last fifty thousand years or so. I thought as I wrote , you as you read and although we are otherwise unacquainted , we are sharing some common grounds of language and interest.
Otherwise you wouldn't have got to the end of this sentence. We also make up a stranger pairing : you are the sole member of the class of your own self , just as I am the solitary inhabitant of the island
of my self. Like the Big Bang and black holes , we are each in our own way what scientists call singularities , briefly bumping into one
another like a pair of elementary particles in the Large Hadron Collider. Perhaps your name is Higgs ?
In the 1950s , W.H. Auden wrote the poem he titled Bathtub Thoughts (c.500 – c.1950) , in which he imagines an equally unlikely
dialogue across that timespan :
Hail , future friend , whose present I
With gratitude now prophesy ,
Kind first to whom it shall occur
My past existence to infer.
Brief salutation best beseems
Two nameless ordinal extremes :
Hail and farewell ! Chance only knows
The length of our respective rows ,
But our numeric bond is such
As gods nor love nor death can touch.
So thought , I thought , the last Romano-Briton
To take his last hot bath.
We voyage across the millenia ourselves when we peruse Egyptian hieroglyphs or the Dead Sea Scrolls. We may then ponder whether
some sort of encounter may not reach across the unimaginably vast reaches of cosmic space. Lets get an idea of the numbers involved. Astronomers have speculated (using probability theory) that any extra-terrestrials
watching us are unlikely to be able to see any light that left Earth later than two hundred or so years ago , after our old friend Samuel
Johnson was writing by candle light. This minimum distance between their world and ours implies that even travelling at the speed of light , it would take 200 years to make the physical journey between us and them.
What could be the purpose of such a journey ? Film-makers have depicted flying saucers doing little more than frightening some hapless chaps in a pick-up truck on a lonely desert road in Arizona or abducting a few
scattered earthlings for closer investigation. We may picture some alien version of the great lexicographer gripping the lapels of his high-collared cloak as he addresses the Galactic Federation thus :
Let observation with extensive view
Survey mankind from China to Peru.
How nations sink , by darling schemes oppressed
When Vengeance listens to the fool's request …..
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Archive
Poets' Corner #1 – Poetic Pessimism, 13th September 2012
Poets' Corner #2 – The Workman's Friend, 10th October 2012
Poets' Corner #3 – On The Trail of Two Dylans, 12th November 2012
Poets' Corner #4 – Omar Khayyam, 14th December 2012
Poets' Corner #5 – William Blake, 25th January 2013
Poets' Corner #6 – A Minor Poet, 19th February 2013
Poets' Corner #7 – Thomas Hardy, 20th March 2013
Poets' Corner #8 – Shakespeare's Sonnets, 21st April 2013
Poets' Corner #9 – Edward Thomas, 20th May 2013
Poets' Corner #10 – Harry Smith's Anthology, 19th June 2013
Poets' Corner #11 – William Plomer, 21st July 2013
Poets' Corner #12 – Ghosts , 20th August 2013
Poets' Corner #13 – William Dunbar, 20th September 2013
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