The Emptiness Of Solids Poem by Paul Hartal

The famous professor
Pummelled the table sonorously
With his fist:
“You must be crazy to believe
that this piece of furniture
Is not firm and solid”, he said.

“Similarly, to your stiff and rigid
spectacles”, said his colleague.
“But if this is impossible,
then tell me how can you see me
through your firm and solid glasses?

The professor opened his lips
but the words stuck in the bottom
of his throat.

“Well, I tell you how”,
his colleague said.
“Glass is a collection
of extremely high frequency
atomic activity.
By way of analogy, imagine a set
Of airplane propellers aligned in rows
And rotate so fast that you would not
be able to see their blades.
They would form an invisible solid
Like eyeglasses.

“ On the atomic level
there are no solids, only gravitational
and electromagnetic events,
and gyrations of electrons.
A piece of solid furniture is basically
Empty space inside.
It is so
because in respective diameters
the distance
between the event called ‘electron’
and the nucleus of the atom
is as big as the distance from
the Earth to the Moon.”