You were born in the mist
Of a worldwide bloody war,
Shielded in the town of Oxford
No one would have known,
Who came to light
On a random winter’s day,
And would have studied darkness
To humanity’s bewilderment
And science dismay.
Who could have envisaged
A modest run-of-the-mill boy,
Having troubles reading would pass
From studying clocks and radios
To figure how they work,
To later toy with physics
Identify the laws,
Of a universe beginning
With a silent bang.
A singularity unfolding
Ever-expanding space,
Projecting multiverse odds
Stretching theories of strings,
To unfathomable infinity
Countless possibilities.
I fell upon you by hazard
Listening to your alas robotic voice,
Notions of evanescence and chaos
Information lost forevermore,
In deep mystifying black holes
Only to reach the end,
Of an article explaining
The genius you were recognised
Even when you were wrong.
Sustaining a verity
You humbly would recant,
Thirty years later tell the world
Indeed energy survives and is returned,
To cosmos under a radiation
They now call by your name,
For there are no “eternal prisons”
Not in space nor in your wheelchair.
Your alacrity showed humanity so
By flying in a zero gravity zone,
Defying the physics constraining your body
An endless fervent hope, I dare
Share with you. For one day
To travel space and understand
A theory encompassing all,
Started studying cosmology
All because of you.
[Featured photo: Stephen Hawking]