Poetry &Science Entropy | 10 Jul 2008
Benzene
This is fascinating poem on Benzene by analytic chemist Paul Board. Equally captivating, its connection with William Blake’s poem THE TYGER
Authors note…With sincere apologies to William Blake ! –
Benzene! Benzene! Burning bright
Belching engines day and night
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame Kekulé’s symmetry ?
Who’d have thought your Carbon Six
Could have produced such toxic tricks
Or provide the building blocks
For a plastic world (and cure the pox) ?
Aesthetic, perfect aromatic
Substitutes produce chromatic
Dyes that brighten every day.
Thank you Mr Faraday.
Clothe our backs and cure our ills
Blow or dull our brains with pills
Ironic that your homologues
Pollute our land and stock our smogs
Benzene – your hydroxyl daughters
Need locking up, they pollute our waters
Adding chlorine provides persistence
(Target organs keep your distance).
Doubt Kekulé ever dreamt
Of such riches (or torment).
Oh benzene whether bound or free
Did He who made the Lamb make Thee ?
Benzene! Benzene! Burning bright
Belching engines day and night
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame Kekulé’s symmetry ?
© Paul Board
on 10 Jul 2008 at 1:25 pm 1.michele roohani said …
being a chemical engineer and this poem of blake being one of the few english poems that i know well, i was very amused by this funny twist. bravo!
TIGER, tiger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare seize the fire?
And what shoulder and what art
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand and what dread feet?
What the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? What dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?
When the stars threw down their spears,
And water’d heaven with their tears,
Did He smile His work to see?
Did He who made the lamb make thee?
Tiger, tiger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?
on 24 Aug 2008 at 5:29 am 2.Paul Board said …
On a wet, windy and wild Saturday night in North Wales, whilst waiting for my teenage daughter to come home, I googled my old ‘poem’ benzene. Really glad it’s travelling!
Thanks for your kind comment Michele, and great site. Glad I found it.
Paul Board