Mantz Yorke
Dark Matter Observes Humankind’s Explanation of Its Origin
We particles and waveforms are here;
we’re there; we’re everywhere;
we’re nowhere you can see.
We’ve followed your attempts to understand
how you and your world came to be.
You first invented gods:
though you haven’t detected them,
some of you remain convinced
your deities exist.
You imagined Earth as a disc floating serenely on the sea
with sun, moon and stars rising and setting at its edge,
then as a globe at the centre of celestial spheres.
Astronomy subsequently showed you
Earth is not the universe’s hub,
but merely a planet orbiting a commonplace sun.
And as your lenses, mirrors and detectors of radio waves
saw further back in time, you were forced to conclude
an infinitesimal hyperheated spot, and not a deity,
was the origin of all that is.
But calculations show you understand
a mere fraction of the cosmos:
your scientists ponder what kinds of particle constitute
the eighty-five per cent of matter they’ve not yet glimpsed.
Protected from stray radiation, acolytes huddle in deep caverns
communing with equipment designed to detect the intrusion
of particles that theory suggests;
others accelerate bits of atoms, crash them at near-light speed
and examine the residues’ curlicues
for hints of particles beyond the Higgs –
so far, to no avail.
You know you will not survive a slowly scorching Earth
and, by the time your DNA begins a journey
a thousand lifetimes long
to kick-start the colonisation of Proxima Centauri’s Planet b,
you may not have found the solution
to the ultimate conundrum of the universe,
but we’ll still be here,
still there,
still everywhere.