THINGNESS. A MANY-BODY PROBLEM

How many electrons does it take to make a thing?

If one is enough, there is a God; if not, not.

We have discovered the size of the god, Wigner crystals

are small, black holes big, for instance.

I am evaporating on the page in front of you, before

your eyes, before the sentence completes itself.

How many things does it take to make an angel?

One, one supposes, since an angel is not composite

but pure all the way through. When I was a child

computers were people not machines to count

how many could dance. There was a book called

De Thiende, the tenth, about tenthness, a thing.

My mind is not right, but I am not wrong.

Small enough to lose, large enough to miss.

We children said prayers in groups of ten,

a tradition. Decimalization.

A truly small size of angel would make

for a large number dancing, many bodies

on the head of a pin. I have seen it written

by Aquinas that an Angel is a cause, yet (Summa, 1,52,3)

Sed Angeli non replent locum, quia solum corpus

replet locum, ut non sit vacuum, ut patet per philosophum,

in IV Physic. Ergo plures Angeli possunt esse in uno loco.

Angels have no size, like life. I have heard it said

that addiction has its own will to live separate

from the addicted. But addiction has no size.

I am writing on the anniversary of the death

of Paul Klee, who drew an Angel with breakfast.

The days on planet Mercury are longer

than the years. I am sitting outside watching

between the movement of surfaces,

air and water, wave, and the light

(wave, particle) in the bowl of the bird bath

a dark design wavers.

A wasp leans itself vertical,

a layer of algae awaits evaporation, prepares.

Oh and also of the planet it was said

“It is not so much an atmosphere as

a slow evaporation of the planet” by

Valeria Mangano, of its exosphere of H and O and

a little He and less Na and K. If I offer

this as a poem and you take it, it is

a gift; if you refuse it is nothing;

its isness is up to you. Vaporous.

“Sin” is a word like “is,” cousins

causing self to consider nonself.

Coda: this was my dream: a plant-form

with insects at the tips of the twigs

the limbs stretch forward toward

light, particles stream in the dark.

Space IS more than the place

where things might be;

But the angels do not fill a place, because

only a body fills a place, so that it be not empty,

as appears from the Philosopher (Phys. iv, text 52,58).

Therefore several angels can be in the one place.

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