Figure D28 BARYONIC

Kalpa upon Kalpa of cosmic time

Has passed for us: the stars no longer glow,

But orbit through a velvet night sublime,

Cold and in seeming spent. Yet, even so,

As atoms flicker languid to and fro

In æons they may leap the quantum wall

To fuse and form the isotope we know

As iron, stablest nucleon of all:

Each star in time becomes a mighty CANNON-BALL.