Surmises 

Beyond the dim horizons of civilization 
  was there man or woman 
  who saw a swan gliding upon green water, 
  and because of its pure white arches 
  wound not slay it to appease  the hunger of the belly? 
Did they take from it instead a newer kind of hunger, 
  hunger for liquid motion and the arch of peace? 

Was there a hunter knapping busily his flint 
  who heard a thousand times the song of stone on stone? 
Did he listen to the unborn sound 
  of pile-driver, piston and metal press 
  and wonder why the earth  itself did not split? 

Was there a bedouin child who   dragged his toes through sand, 
  a river child who pressed his thumbs in clay? 
Did he feel the secret stylus in his blood 
  and see the figure and calligraphy 
  of signs not dreamed? 

Whence come the myriad  accomplishments of men, 
  the mixing and the melting,  fusing and fermenting, 
  transformations thrice  removed from raw stuff? 
Did they come from clanging  gods who melted into shade 
  when they had bestowed their cunning? 
Or from peculiar men who   shunned the shade 
  to wonder in the clarity of day? 

Beyond the far horizons of the dawning years 
  will there be man or woman, 
  seeing a necklace of unfamiliar stars 
  will want to unthread the  jewels of space 
  and take one when the earth  is dead? 

Will there be a son of man with forceps delicate 
  who will uncoil the helical  threads of life's molecule 
  and spiral them afresh to  shape an embryo of form 
  fairer than Venus? 

Will there be a sister of mercy to distil a potion 
  from the cup of future alchemy, 
  and lave the synapses of brain 
  till fear and mischief and the  cult of crime 
  are dissolved? 

Who shapes the days we shall not see, 
  their glorious promise and  their ghoulish threat? 
Is it fate beyond our spelling out? 
  Or the grain and gamut of the universe 
  which holds untold surprises in its wrap, 
And throws a single one into the air 
  whenever man is ready to think 
  and grasp the incredible? 

Facts 

Some facts are as large as the whole earth 
  taken in one sweep, 
a man in capsule can compass   it within an hour or so. 

Some facts are as large as a galaxy, 
  a smudge on the image of a telescope, 
yet years of light across, arm   to swirling arm. 

Some facts are smaller than thought can penetrate; 
  neutrino, from the belly of the sun, 
  passes right through   interstices of earth 
  to the other side of space; 
  yet captured, one hundred trillion of them 
  scintillate on man's cunning tally. 

Phi meson, spending all its life, 
  in two ten-thousandths of one trillionth 
  of a second, is scarecely there. 
Can anything so brief be  reckoned as a fact? 
Yet its presence fills a gap 
  in the noble eight-fold path of the nucleus. 

Some say the world of facts is tedious catalogue, 
  much calculation and too many zeros 
  beyond remembering. 
How many colours to the rainbow? 
How many planets round the sun? 
How many species of ants? 
How many synthetic hydrocarbons? 
Who wants to be a walking encyclopaedia? 

Give us meanings and far-flung pruposes; 
  things to love and things to die for. 
You can keep your facts in a cupboard; 
  but love and enterprise run out into life 
  for engagement and involvement. 

But facts, I think, have the last word. 
They are grit and roughage of our diet, 
  and grist to the mill of our minds. 
They are always there to confound the pompous 
  and to court the comical. 

"The Ground of all is God," he said; 
  "It's mesons." I replied. 
"And what in hell are they?" he asked; 
  "I'll show you; come inside." 

The dyno hummed, the cyclo tronned 
  And made unholy clatter. 
He saw the purple blips, and said: 
  "My God! -- and anti-matter!"