Quark Dance

here come the colours
to settle on our lips and eyes
and rainbow lighting all the edges
the boundaries are unstable
trust love not logic
light falls
never the same way twice
keep awake
jump out into the never look back
dream hair ribbons unfurling
I can if you can too
barefoot balance and free fall
without scary death in our mouths
just plain delight
learning to nudge the wind
dance falling exploding symmetry
stretching the space
pulse slow arm elbow up
whip spine twist
thigh knee toe out
the current passes
nowadays science is pure poetry
all the particles bounce and decay
sweetly and sure as seeds
and quarks come in such colours and flavours
as beauty charm and strangeness
it’s all so weird and simple
the world’s made up of tiny little energetic
multicoloured irrational jellybeans
so dance
quark dance

Cilla McQueen
From Anti Gravity (McIndoe 1984), re-published in Poeta (2018, OUP)

‘Quark Dance’: it was unusual to write about quantum physics in 1984, but I did it anyway in this poem from Anti Gravity which delights unscientifically in the remarkable behaviours of elementary particles.
Cilla McQueen

Cilla McQueen MNZM is a poet, teacher and artist, and a three-time winner of the New Zealand Book Award for Poetry. She received an honorary doctorate in literature from the University of Otago in 2008 and was New Zealand Poet Laureate from 2009 to 2011. In 2010 she received the Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement (Poetry). In 2020 she was appointed a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services as a poet. Cilla lives in Bluff, at the southern tip of New Zealand’s South Island.

Otago University Press page

Playing Favourites is a series where poets pick a favourite poem of their own or by another nz poet.