This Is Unphysical

“If Q increased further, the radius

Of the event horizon would become

A complex number. . . . This is unphysical.”

In simpler terms, impossible, and so

No such black holes, and yet it is, is named,

Is a well-worn mathematical tool,

Our complex number, as honed as the blade

By which Zhuangzi’s butcher effortlessly

Cut the joints: physical, unphysical.

Poor sacrificial ox, this universe,

Felled by our mathematical metaphors.

Such a great beast, such small tools. I must ask—

What are the deepest implications

Of these facts for how tiny we are,

We all are, our Earth is, the stars are?

It’s a powerful puzzle,

This weakest force in any

Math-possible universe,

Gravity—if it is that,

If the conjecture holds up

Through the inverse relation

Fresh equations show between

Energy and entropy—

To say why gravity’s weak,

Beyond all philosophy,

Beyond all speculation,

Weakest of all possible

Worlds, Dr. Pangloss, all worlds!

Would that tell us what it means

That we’re so small, small at all?

Supposing any universe requires

A whole lot of variation in size,

Small wonders why the small studies it all,

Why any wonder appears or appeals

To the small. Smaller and smaller it grows,

Around wonder’s lighthouse, wonder’s pulsar,

Wonder’s bright-and-dark heart of metaphors,

Their deepest implications staggering

For carrying almost no force at all.