Entropy

You know the things scientists talk about

It is like others talking about love

This heat death, and somewhere the great attractor

Somehow the world feels like a projection and the lamp is burning out

Not for me

I believe the visions are false

Love, longing, and the semaphore of looking

Like me gazing at the stars, wondering if I will know

Thinking of all that has gone by, things that are left to see

You, and I

Things that have been cast aside, but beside 

Where the world seems to end, begin, and also be in a flux of both

Neither says what the day will be that comes up next

I sit here, smoke, watch the moon rise, as the stars pass by.

**Entropy: When Grand Narratives Fail**

This poem sits at the intersection of cosmic exhaustion and personal refusal. It opens with a comparison that immediately undercuts both terms – scientists talking about entropy are like people talking about love. Both, the speaker suggests, are caught up in their own grand narratives, their own ways of making sense of things that might not actually make sense.

The first stanza sets up the cosmological frame: heat death, the Great Attractor, the universe winding down. But there's something off about the metaphor. "The world feels like a projection and the lamp is burning out" – not the universe, the *world*. It's already collapsed the distance between cosmic scale and personal experience. The lamp could be anything: a cinema projector, a bedside light, consciousness itself.

Then comes the pivot. "Not for me." Simple, direct, almost stubborn. The speaker doesn't buy it – neither the scientific narrative nor, as it turns out, the romantic one. "I believe the visions are false" works both ways. False visions of universal heat death, false visions of transcendent love. What's left? "The semaphore of looking" – just signals, gestures, attempts at meaning that may or may not land.

"Like me gazing at the stars, wondering if I will know" – know what? The line doesn't complete itself. That's the point. The wondering is perpetual, the knowing deferred. Past and future blur: "all that has gone by, things that are left to see." Time becomes less a progression and more a kind of inventory, things scattered around in no particular order.

The third stanza's the trickiest. "You, and I" – suddenly there's a second person, but they're barely there. Just presence, not personality. "Things that have been cast aside, but beside" – the wordplay hints at proximity without connection. Things discarded, but still nearby. That captures something about entropy itself, doesn't it? Nothing disappears, it just stops being useful, stops being organized.

"Where the world seems to end, begin, and also be in a flux of both" – this is the heart of it. Not a clean narrative of decline, but something messier. The end and the beginning happening at once, neither fully real. And crucially: "Neither says what the day will be that comes up next." Neither you nor I, neither science nor love, neither the universe nor personal experience can predict what's coming. The future remains opaque.

Which brings us to the final gesture. After all this refusal, all this scepticism about grand explanations, what's left is beautifully simple: "I sit here, smoke, watch the moon rise, as the stars pass by."

Present tense. Physical presence. The act of watching without needing to understand. The moon rises – that's local, immediate. The stars pass by – that's cosmic, distant. Both happen simultaneously. The speaker's not trying to reconcile them or extract meaning from them. Just sitting with it. The cigarette's a nice touch – something burning down on a human timescale, a tiny echo of that heat death, but immediate, chosen, almost companionable.

There's something quietly radical about this ending. After rejecting both scientific determinism and romantic transcendence, the poem doesn't offer a third way. It offers presence. Attention without conclusion. The entropy might be real, the heat death might be coming, love might be real or might be semaphore – but right now, this moment, the moon is rising.

The poem's in conversation with a particular kind of educated melancholy – you can feel the physics terminology, the awareness of cosmological timescales. But it refuses to be awed by them. Refuses to let them dictate the emotional register. If the universe is winding down, well... so is this cigarette. Both facts are true. Neither cancels out the act of sitting here, watching.

What makes it work is the restraint. There's no dramatic gesture, no sudden revelation. The scepticism doesn't become cynicism. The uncertainty doesn't become despair. It's just… this. A person sitting, smoking, watching. The stars don't care if you understand entropy. The moon rises anyway.

That's the poem's quiet wisdom. Not that meaning doesn't exist, but that meaning might not matter as much as we think it does. Or rather, the meaning might be in the sitting and watching itself, not in what we conclude from it.

The title – *Entropy* – works as both subject and method. The poem itself has a kind of entropic structure. Ideas scatter, connections loosen, nothing quite resolves. But unlike actual entropy, there's still attention holding it together. Still someone sitting there, still the moon rising, still the choice to watch.