Jan 29 2010
The World in a Drop of Rain
In his poem, Auguries of Innocence, William Blake wrote:
To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.
I don’t know about a grain of sand, but there definitely is a world in a drop of rain water. Dust from far-away Africa, acidic by-products of industrial pollution, many species of bacteria . . . .
As observers of the universe, human beings are quite large. The smallest details are invisible to us. We’re also quite small. The most distant details are beyond us. Fortunately, the tools of science can help us gain an understanding of the universe. . . whether or not we label that understanding as poetry.
