Poem: ‘On Visible Light’

Science in meter and verse

*“On Visible Light” is a villanelle, defined by the Academy of American Poets as a highly structured poem made up of five tercets followed by a quatrain, with two repeating rhymes and two refrains.*

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Knowledge is the fruiting body of light,
and light the fruiting body of photons
at the end of traveling through our nights

to reach the velvet chair, the common snipe,
where we see that in an object's reflection,
knowledge is the fruiting body of light.

Just a slice of electromagnetic
wavelength and sight is ours, a blindness gone
at the end of traveling through our nights.

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All this way and yet something's not right.
This blue color we see is the chair's rejection.
Knowledge is the fruiting body of light

whose shadows dog us. Might this be the heart
of why we fail to reach satisfaction
at the end of traveling through our nights.

Always wanting what is beyond our sight,
always drawn toward the parts still hidden.
Knowledge is the fruiting body of light
at the end of traveling through our nights.

Edited by Dava Sobel

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