SHADOWGRAPH 144: FROM ONE CAVITY TO ANOTHER
By Sean Howard

shadowgraph 144: from one cavity to another
(poetry detected in claude cohen-tannoudji’s nobel physics lecture, 1997)

‘the orchestrated effort’: detuning the spheres! (chime waves.) ‘sequencing,’ eventide, bells summoning the stars… (macbeth’sred carpet.) hulled, light rusting... (zeeman stains.) ‘new

branches’; a high, chirped frequency… zoomladen. aladdin’s lab – slowly rubbing/the lamp until… nanotheism. (merde in the cathedral.) tiny cell? the lady in the lake. (dream: dolphin

friendly…) joseph still trapped in the pit! (science only/bad cold?) ‘something rotten’ – the
state’s incurable insomnia. (doctor atomic, the sandman in his castle...) ‘war & peace’; GP-

SS. ‘off-switch,’ the earth fountain… dante, ‘love, the way light moves!’

When the Music Stops…

Captured poem, from Collier’s Photographic History of the European War (1915)

The British and German
possessions in Africa
have already taken part

in the world-wide con-
flict. Indeed, a rearrangement
of German, British,

Portuguese, and French
possessions in Africa
may be among the

important results of the War. The
picture shows a British
Expeditionary Force

setting out from Sierra Leone
to attack the port of Duala,
in the German Colony

Kamerun.

test poem, main-à-dieu bay

august 16, 2016

moon-
rise, gulls br-

ush, touch-
stone

Holes (Faust Scorecard)

2016 US Open at ‘Oak-
mont’ (split & drowned
by the Pennsylvania turn-
pike): awe-hush in the
box, ‘they cut down
fifteen thousand
trees!’

setting (unregarded poem, toronto)

philosopher’s walk –
pinetop sparrow
eyes the moon

About the Author:

Sean Howard is the author of Local Calls (Cape Breton University Press, 2009), Incitements (Gaspereau Press, 2011), and The Photographer’s Last Picture(Gaspereau Press, 2016). His poetry has been widely published in Canada and elsewhere, and anthologized in The Best Canadian Poetry in English (Tightrope Books, 2011 & 2014).