The Atom No. 18

                                                     A l l
T       h     e                     things living on the          a     t     o      m   
f      i     n     d           surface    of     our    globe          s             w 
i     t     h      i         arrive at the equator a recital             n
i     t     s      e        of  our  uncertainties.  A touch           l     f   
T     r      u     t      of  blue devotion.  Waves and              h           a     n
d          J     u           lastly light nestling.  Trans-      s      t     i     c     e  
                                    lation  of space indicat-
                                           ing  the  future.

Copyright © 2022 by Sarah Mangold. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on September 30, 2022, by the Academy of American Poets.

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“‘The Atom, No. 18’ is inspired by Swedish artist and researcher Hilma af Klint’s The Atom Series (1917). The series contains twenty drawings which illustrate two images of an atom on each page: one image shows the atom as it exists on the etheric plane and the other shows the atom’s state of energy on the physical plane, enlarged four times. My series of twenty atom poems consists of af Klint’s original notation for each atom in italics, with my depiction of that notation’s state of energy enlarged four times on the physical plane.”
—Sarah Mangold