This poem’s conceptual genesis:
This poem is an intellectual challenge. Titus Lucretius Carus (99BC – 55BC) wrote De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things) to remove from his mind the supernatural and the fear of death. He expounds on the philosophy of Epicurus, promoting atomism, the idea that all matter is derived from unseen elementary particles. This of course clashes with metaphysics manifested as in religion. Thus the work was repressed and forbidden through the millennia only to resurface in the hands of great thinkers. To place all this into a short poem was indeed a challenge.

De Rerum Natura
(On the Nature of Things)

The atom exists
wrote poet Lucretius
two millennia ago
He knew it existed,
not what it is.
It was always there,
always will be
Nothing produces nothing,
cannot produce nothing
so there is something
Fortuna made it him

Dangerous idea
to be basic material
Incompatible as we fear
raging angry gods,
haters of pleasure
Monks aghast hid it
behind a rigid
wall of ignorance
until rescued by
Poggio Florentinus

Innumerable atoms
collide randomly in space
forming complex structures,
that revert to atoms
We from celestial seed
whence all evolve
last not forever
Only atoms are infinite
Epicurus saw results
sans hierarchal confines
Machiavelli to Montaigne
to Newton and Darwin
Jefferson and Einstein
Atomists all finding pleasure
in knowing the secret
of the ancient light
Dust to dust

by Duane Robert Pierson, 2011

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