ODE TO CRYSTALLIZATION

                      The atom is a crystal
                     of a sort; the lattices
                      its interlockings form
                  lend a planarity most pleasing
            to the abysses and cliffs, much magnified,
              of (for example) salt and tourmaline.
                          Arise, order,
                        out of necessity!
                       Mock, you crystals,
             with all appearance of chiselled design,
                  our hope of a Grand Artificer.
       The graceful, layered frost-ferns the midnight elves
               left on the Shillington windowpanes
         for my morning astonishment were misinformation,
                              as is
            the glittering explosion of tinted quartz
          discovered in earth like a nugget of thought,
                         buried evidence
          crying out for release to the workman's pick,
           tangled hexagonal hair of an angel interred
       where it fell, our earth still molten, in the Fall.

          When, on those anvils at the center of stars,
                and those even more furious anvils
                   of the exploding supernovae,
             the heavy elements were beaten together
                    to the atomic number of 94
        and the crystalline metals with their easily lost 
                    valence electrons arose, 
               their malleability and conductivity
               made Assyrian goldsmithing possible,
                    and most of New York City.

                    Stendhal thought that love
         should be likened to a bare branch crystallized
     by a winter in the depths of the salt mines of Hallein:
                  "The tiniest twigs, no bigger
       than a tomtit's claw, are spangled with an infinite
           number of shimmering, glistening crystals."
                Our mathematics and hope of Heaven
                     alike look to crystals;
                   their arising, the mounting
            of molecules one upon the other, suggests
               that inner freezing whereby inchoate
              innocence compresses a phrase of art.

                Music rises in its fixed lattices
           and its cries of aspiration chill our veins
                    with snowflakes of blood;
           the mind grapples up an inflexible relation
                 and the stiff spheres chime ---
          themselves, the ancients thought, all crystal.
       In this seethe of hot muck there is something else:
          the ribs of an old dory emerge from the sand,
          the words set their bevelled bite on the page,
        the loved one's pale iris flares in silent assent,
            the electrons leap, leaving positive ions
  as the fish scales of moonlight show us water's perfect dance.
              Steno's Law, crystallography's first:
         the form of crystal admits no angle but its own.
     
                                        John Updike