Your body stopped,
but your mind was still searching
across the borders of possibility
towards the goal of everything
in the cosmos big and the quantum small.

It could not stop, for it was
part of the groaning universe itself,
as particles self-aware, reaching out,
particles of the same substance universal,
particles of curiosity, old and new.

Trapped, you were, in a body
that lived beyond possibility,
to keep the search alive and seek,
in the beauty of mathematics,
the nature of the ultimate truth.

This body, silent and static,
could not hold back the running voice
that echoed strongly as machine, as human
with machine, the cause of science,
and the passion for meaning itself.

And while we may see some grand inspiration
in you doing so much with a body that would not do
anything but exist, I see just your spirit emerging,
I see but your soul unfold, and I see only your mind unfurling
beyond this body out to the universe unknown.

 

For Stephen Hawking

 

18/3/2018