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52 So, wind must be made of invisible bodies, since, in its effects, it is like water, whose visible bodies – burns rivers, vortices, canals, springs and seas – are moving and substantial to your naked eye. Lucret ius / Norgate The sensuous proof of atomism (De Rerum Natura, 1, 298-328) You can’t see a voice, but you hear airwaves vibrate. You know heat through touch. Clothes dampen, hung out on a wave-breaking beach, dry on an inland bush. Do you see mizzle creeping into the cloth’s weave? Can you watch it leave? A ring wears away. You do not see the gold go, thinning day by day.
page 59
Lucretius / Norgat e Drips bore holes in stone. Under the earth, a rubbed flint strikes atoms from the plough’s blade. Passeggiata. Who sees the step’s curve deepen under the crowd’s feet? Tourists shake the hands of bronze statues by the gate. A joke that wears thin. We do not see salt eating away the chalk cliffs until the house falls. Our eyes don’t freeze frame, can’t attenborough a vine’s snaking growth through trees. We are not brahmins, don’t brush away ants, fearing to crush the unseen. We need a glass lens, not our eyes. Then we’ll admit the hidden matter. 53

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52

So, wind must be made of invisible bodies, since, in its effects,

it is like water, whose visible bodies – burns rivers, vortices,

canals, springs and seas – are moving and substantial to your naked eye.

Lucret ius / Norgate

The sensuous proof of atomism (De Rerum Natura, 1, 298-328)

You can’t see a voice, but you hear airwaves vibrate. You know heat through touch.

Clothes dampen, hung out on a wave-breaking beach, dry on an inland bush.

Do you see mizzle creeping into the cloth’s weave? Can you watch it leave?

A ring wears away. You do not see the gold go, thinning day by day.

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