A kind of love

For Carlo Rovelli
and ‘Seven Brief Lessons on Physics’
translated by Simon Carnell and Erica Segre

He treats me with courtesy,
knows I am here to learn,
respects that fact
and is kind.

There’s no condescension
and no man-made chasm.
I need to feel his joy
and share his love.

Great teachers are like this.
He is careful with his pace,
rejects – more than that –
denies any cultural divide.

Translated from Italian
he brings me connections.
With Ludwig Boltzmann
will come Beethoven.

He is moving me to chance,
probability and uncertainty
but always, with humanity,
connecting me with Nature.

Finally, ‘In closing’ he speaks
of ‘Ourselves’, tells me we all
find our being in and with Nature.
Each ‘a node in the network’.

A theoretical quantum physicist,
he has brought me to the mystery. With him,
I’m in awe of the beauty at this frontier,
at the edge of the ‘ocean of the unknown’.

Erica Jolly has been a contributor to Poet’s Corner since its Independent Weekly print days. A graduate from Adelaide University with honours in history, she gained her Masters in English Literature from Flinders University. Teaching and holding curriculum positions in secondary schools for 40 years, she has been elected to the Flinders University Governing Council and Academic Senate, and helped combine various faculties and schools there. She has authored five books, two on South Australian educational history, two of her poetry, and from Adelaide’s Lythrum Press in 2010 and launched by Robyn Williams, ‘Challenging the Divide: Approaches to Science and Poetry.’

Readers’ original and unpublished poems of up to 40 lines can be emailed, with postal address, to [email protected]. Submissions should be in the body of the email, not as attachments. A poetry book will be awarded to each accepted contributor.