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Sister Mary Appassionata on the Grand Unified Theory

The layers of creation
zebra and wapiti, weasel,
tapeworm, deer tick, nouns
of all sorts, brick and steel,
the fine, distant diamonds
that dangle between Orion's legs
from his glittering belt, even
this hand coming out of the sleeve
of its habit to move chalk
across blackboard, scraping nails
across the slate from time to time
to wake the loser-snoozers — these
are fermions (quarks, anti-
quarks, mesons). And now I'm
writing the word leptons
(electrons, muons, taus, neutrinos),
the fine print of the contract
we've signed with matter.
These careen around the nucleus
like muscle cars of the senior boys
let out after last period,
their best girls (skirts sliding up,
cracking their gum) hanging
all over them. Bosons (photons,
gluons, W's and Z's) make
our days stick to one another
like the sweet belly-sweat of lovers
dancing. I'm sorry to report
we can't find the graviton
to save our lives, yet such
a good idea must have weight.
String theory — branes humming
in ten dimensions — explains
how creatures as irregular
as boys and girls can come together
to make an almost perfect fit.
But a theory of absolutely everything,
grand and unified, needs more,
someone to stand outside
to prove it true, watchers
who like to watch the watched.
In all the universe we
are the principals of uncertainty.
So there you have it, though
there is a place it all makes sense,
where stars align for every gazer
into the highest name
of every good, a cosmos
humming with love indivisible.
Let's rearrange our desks again
and see what we can see.

David Citino
The News and Other Poems
University of Notre Dame Press