M-Theory, or, A Piece for Eleven Strings
--T. J. McLemore

Where M stands for magic, mystery, or
membrane, according to taste
                                      Edward Witten


Even the body, so impossibly tuned and tensioned:

all of us crimped, folded and thrumming just so, they say,

like a trillion trillion guitars or glass harmonicas, tiny

symphonies of sound—so why not metaphysics? and maybe

it was a lonely voice that started it all, a single word

that set everything to spinning out in ripples, these circles

we know so well: as all water ends up in the sea, for a time,

as the planets will spiral into their star, be turned to light

(so what is death but a change of state?)—and light, set free

in time, no instrument, no body, pushes back the void, still

humming whatever this song is we all run on, and run to



[via poetry daily]