The world has signed a pact with the Devil; it had to. It is a covenant to which every thing, even every hydrogen atom, is bound. The terms are clear; if you want to live, you have to die; you cannot have mountains and creeks without space, and space is a beauty married to a blind man.
The blind man is Freedom, or Time, and he does not go anywhere without his great dog Death. The world came into being with the signing of the contract. A scientist called it the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
A poet says, “The force that through the green fuse drives the flower/Drives my green age.” This is what we know. The rest is gravy. (p. 183)
Quoting Dylan Thomas's poem:
THE FORCE THAT THROUGH THE GREEN FUSE DRIVES THE FLOWER
The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees
Is my destroyer.
And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose
My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.
The force that drives the water through the rocks
Drives my red blood; that dries the mouthing streams
Turns mine to wax.
And I am dumb to mouth unto my veins
How at the mountain spring the same mouth sucks.
The hand that whirls the water in the pool
Stirs the quicksand; that ropes the blowing wind
Hauls my shroud sail. And I am dumb to tell the hanging man
How of my clay is made the hangman's lime.
The lips of time leech to the fountain head;
Love drips and gathers, but the fallen blood
Shall calm her sores. And I am dumb to tell a weather's wind
How time has ticked a heaven round the stars.
And I am dumb to tell the lover's tomb
How at my sheet goes the same crooked worm.
Dylan Thomas
Till my last Proton decays
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