Sean Sullivan: Berkeley's Tree

This is a poem about quantum physics. Some of the references will be a little unclear unless you know about physics and metaphysics, but hopefully it will make enough sense to be enjoyable.


BERKELEY'S TREE
By Sean Sullivan
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In a place that lay on the twilight of knowledge
standing in a superposition of day and night
Scrodinger's Cat was stuck in Berkeley's Tree.

It had scrambled up in a fit of feline frenzy
(though this was a bit fuzzy, I don't mean fur)
on its midnight stroll through the Empty Forest.

The Forest was still Empty, for as we all know,
the Cat it is a cute (but stupid) creature
that can't even collapse its own wave-function.

God could collapse the system, of the Cat and Tree,
if he came; but of course every Cat knows it's God
and they're just too lazy to leave the seventh day.

Hawking, asked if he might make the noble quest,
was distracted from playing with his black hole
and he merely offered to definitely shoot the Cat.

So in search of the escaped parcel of the experiment
the Professor sent Wigner's Friend to the Forest
where he gazed with a definite stare upon the Tree.

But was the Cat-state so real for the Professor?
For until he hears a report from the rescue team
the answer has not crossed von Neumann's Chain.

No one has ever known a fact they did not know
thus no one knows if there might be an inequality
between the contents of our Knowledge and Reality;

Thus we stand today in the limbo of ignorance
as we choose from the triad of interpretations
offered by materialism, idealism and many worlds.

In glimpsing the strange reality unfolded by science
we may choose our poison, yet one thing is certain:
Each is surely fatal to the notion of common sense.

The answer, of course, is that Everett was right
for God is even now sleeping in Berkeley's Tree,
content to let everything possible really happen.

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