Physics of Immortality

Selections taken from "Poems Under the Sun," A collection of original poems

Variations on T.S. Eliot

Part One

Let us go colonize the universe, you and I,

Before the sun expands across the sky

Like a tyrant with imperial aspirations.

Let us go to certain uninhabited galaxies,

The solar escape velocities of von Neumann probes

With forward laser sails

And Daedalus engines with nuclear propulsion tails.

Galaxies that flee like a fugitive from felony prosecution

To lead you to the Omega point.

O! Do not ask ‘how far?’

Let us travel to a distant star.

In the cosmos universal constructors come and go

Engineering human embryos.

The invisible force that breaks the expanding Local Group,

The unseen hand that tugs upon the tie that binds the Local Group,

Closed its fingers around the sun, caused a nuclear reaction,

And feeling it burn and cool within its grip,

Began a slow contraction.

In the cosmos universal constructors come and go

Engineering human embryos.