Facade

Beneath this facade
Of solid things,
Infinite ignorance,
The conundrum
Of ordinary matter,
The strangeness
Of empty space;
Behind this wall
Of four dimensions
We poke and prod
Into wilder realms--
The deeper we plunge
The less it seems
We'll ever know;

Atoms crumpling
Into countless strings,
Reality reduced
To mathematical
Squiggles and dots,
Until logic
Finally shutters,
And common sense
Is all but lost--
In the driven quest
For a little more,
The closer we move,
The farther we get
From the core.

What kind of creature
Lurks outside
The unseen curve
Of our jaded sight,
The narrow boundaries
Of our tiny lives,
That flames the dreams
Within our cells,
While swallowing worlds
And spitting out
Fiery balls of light?