Pedra Senhora Poem by Keith Shorrocks Johnson

In the natural and engineered stone showroom
Our small party turned down an aisle
Between sets of kitchen 'Slab Gallery' slices
Browsing a last look at bench top options.

It was a ‘coup de foudre' or love at first sight
Or perhaps better in Portuguese ‘amor à primeira vista'
Given that we are talking of black mosaic marinace granite
From the State of Bahia in Brasil

-

Cobbles, pebbles, boulders, rubble, rounded scree
Of grey marble, mottled vulcanite, gneiss and quartzite
Tumbled in an ancient riverbed, conglomerate compacted,
Imbedded in a crystalline matrix of gleaming black biotite

Brought to light from a deep polymict metamorphosis,
Under eons of extraordinary pressures and temperatures
1 billion years or so distant - possibly during the SAMBA orogeny
Caused by Norway encroaching on proto-South America

-

Like peering into a deep clear profound eye to the past
unconditional, unquestionable, undoubted, unequivocal,
unlimited, unrestricted, unrestrained, unbounded, unbound,
boundless, infinite, ultimate, utter, sovereign, omnipotent.

Turn away I must my supremely beautiful Medusa,
Reaching for Jacques Monod's talisman of Chance and Necessity:

A totally blind process can by definition lead to anything;
It can even lead to vision itself.

Man knows at last that he is alone
In the universe's unfeeling immensity,
Out of which he emerged only by chance.
His destiny is nowhere spelled out, nor is his duty.
The kingdom above or the darkness below: it is for him to choose.

L'homme sait enfin qu'il est seul
Dans l'immensité indifférente de l'univers
D'où il a émergé par hasard.
Non plus que son destin,
Son devoir n'est écrit nulle part.
A lui de choisir entre le royaume et les ténèbres.

Un processus totalement aveugle
Peut par définition conduite à n'importe quoi;
Cela peut même conduire à la vision elle-même.