'Hopes and Dreams'...explores the limitations of perception in more than three dimensions plus time.


I

Uncoupling hopes from truth sometimes reveals reality
Which is hard to bear
According to Eliot.
The difference between hope and what is real
Is sometimes the basis for laughter
Or tears…..
In equal measure
Depending on the deficit
Between reality, and the reality of hoping.
Two sides of the same coin
The masks of theatre,
Comedy and tragedy.

Yet reality is what we face day to day
Uncoupled from hope
An atheistic vision of what is true
In which dreams expire.

Hopes, dreams and reality
Congregate in theistic minds
As a woven integrity
But is the congress true?

Atheist and theist in perpetual conflict
One offering only truth,
The other hoping that belief is true
But, to what ….?
In this world caught in three dimensions
But do not forget time that marks when
We are born and when we die
According to Ecclesiastes.

The atheism of truths of a certain kind
Confined by the question asked
And who is asking, and the way of asking,
Atheist and theist talking at each other
But not in conversation
A dialogue of deafness to other points of view
An unbridged chasm for all of human history.

The certainty of truth is one problem,
Because certainty brooks no other view
But remember the constraints of truth’s
discovery and then assertion
In three dimensions, and do not forget time.

Unwittingly Carl Sagan made the point in flatland
A place of two dimensions,
Breadth and width, but no height
Infinitesimally flat, thin
Flat and thin, so that an apple
In its plump three dimensional roundness
Made its visit, announced its presence
But left only an infinitesimally flat, thin
Impression of its visitation,
With its announcement seemingly coming from wherever,
Infinite confusion.
For flatlanders who perceived a visitation
Without explanation
A mystery within which we experience
The determinism of truth
Not qualified by the dimensions
In which it’s made
Or defined
To the confusion of those who question truth,
If truth means the assertion of certainty.

Was it for flatlanders first cause?
Just like Paley’s watchmaker of the watch
found on the heath,
Each trapped in their respective
Two dimensions and three dimensions
Limited by their dimensionality
Of what they could see or imagine.
Not yet liberated by many dimensions
That liberated Tennyson to understand
That more is achieved by dreaming without limits.

Tennyson said…
That more things are achieved by prayer
Than this world dreams of,
But what are dreams?
Visions of hope, or the darkness of damnation?
But can we imagine these visions
In many dimensions?
And find new truths which we cannot perceive
In the day to day.

II

Dreams can be suspension
Between what is real and what we hope for,
Or ……
A plunge into an abyss of horrors
The nightmare’s nightcrusher
That reflects the fears of our experience,
The fears of Fuseli’s nights
Of grotesque creatures that taunt the hopes
Of our tomorrows
By revealing the layers of yesterday’s experience,
A past that haunts the future
In the day to day.

Yet redeemed by intentions
For the good,
And honourable to the nature of humankind,
And lifekind with which we share organic ancestry.

Dreams release the mind to find another place,
Another dimension, where what happens
Can happen and more than we can suppose
According to Haldane.

Limitless possibilities that dreamtimes
Expose what we do not own
But instead we are a part of.
Land, sea and air fused with the spirit
Of peoples that inhabit distant shores
Where they are one with the place
Where they are, were and will be
For all time.
The dreamtime of Australia’s
Original peoples.

And so the plump apple
Becomes a part of the experience
Of those who live in two dimensions,
Carl’s flatlanders experience their
Dreamtime of first causes
Because the missing dimension disallows
Their understanding of what is real.

So conflate the idea to many dimensions
And you can see what I mean.
Imagine the unimaginable
That cannot be seen
Because of the constraints of three dimensions.

And do not forget time
Perhaps the portal for imagining
What cannot be experienced
In spacetime warped and curved
By the embrace of gravity.

We sail in this cosmic sea
Not seeing its possibilities
Because we are not equipped
To see through a glass darkly
Or so Corinthians says
But to half see, dimly see
Love
And the truth of black holes
Where physics is sundered
Perhaps allowing passage to other creations
To us mere visions of what we aspire to be
And understand
Just as Blake saw heaven in a wild flower.

III

To perceive the possibility of many dimensions
Is to free the mind
From superstition
From the prejudices
That blight the landscape of our thinking,
And the landscape of dreams
When we perceive self
As if disembodied
Floating on the ceiling looking down
Detachedly on what we do
And what others do in the day to day.

Doings driven by the limited framework
Of width, breadth and height.
Width and breadth and height
And do not forget the passage of time
In which our doings take place.

One is singular in mind and body
Meaning self in the day to day.
To be beside oneself is joy and anger
The Janus faced self
Somewhat like the masks of comedy and tragedy
But of emotion and not theatrical circumstance.

How many multiples of
Space and time
Are needed to be beside oneself
In a quantum universe?
Or universes where to touch would be
Annihilation of self
Tracked as energy pure, and as simple
As the dreams of our disembodied self
Looking down from the ceiling.

IV

Is hope the delusion of optimism,
Dreams its manifestation of unreality?
Who can say because analysis
Is limited within the context of our perception.
Perception influenced by prejudice and misunderstanding
Because we are limited by what
Can be understood
In three dimensions,
And do not forget time
And gravity
And the failure of its resolution with dimension
and time
Limiting understanding.



But……
If we acknowledge the limitations
Even if not understanding the quantum context
Then, given we are prepared to accept the
uncertainty
Described by Heisenberg,
Then we are mentally equipped
To understand that truth is provisional
But with verity according to experience
Accumulated through the continuity of history.

We try to resolve contradictions
Because resolution anchors us into
the certainty of
Our present experience,
And certainty is comfort, allowing us to live
Day to day.

David Applin, May 2013

Copyright David Applin 2015

Tea Talk (or Taking Tea)


Jam comes first
And then the cream
Said the scone from Cornwall
To one ‘n’ all
Taking tea

Milk jug blinked.
The teaspoon gasped,
Who would have linked
The layers of bliss that sweetly kiss
With their order between the halves of a scone
From Cornwall
Where one ‘n’ all
Know that the milk is churned
Until it’s solid
Then we say the cream is clotted.

The teapot looked at the scone from Devon
Who knows that cream and jam is heaven
But only if the cream comes first
And then the jam . . . . .
My thoughts exactly said the ham
From between its sandwich fingers
Where it lingers
Until it’s time for tea.

‘Are you sure?’ the teacup said
To ham within its breaden bed.
Saucer asked the cucumber salad,
‘Should jam come first?’
‘But does it matter?’ said cucumber salad.
‘It’s a ballad
So red and white,
A symphony of taste
Into which to bite.
It is so right
For those who are taking tea,’

‘Jam then cream, is what you do,’
Insisted Cornwall’s scone who
As we know likes cream to be clotted.
But tomato blushed and quickly said,
‘With cream from Devon I am besotted
Because we know it’s clotted. . . . .
Too.

Onion, hearing Cornwall and Devon
Knows that cream and jam are heaven . . . . .
But jam and cream are bliss
Sealed with a kiss that is heaven . . . . .too.
The dilemma of order fuels onion’s frustration
And onion’s tears lead to prostration
For those who are taking tea.

What is to be done
To solve the question of order
Jam first . . . . . or cream?
The issue borders
On the ridiculous
As the layers sweetly intermingle
Like the lovers’ kiss
As those who are taking tea
Bite . . . . .
Ouch! said onion
The scone from Cornwall
And the scone from Devon
‘Either way is heaven.

David Applin

Copyright …David Applin (2015)

Lily’s first poem

Lily’s eyes are a pool of dreams
Love and laughter are two great themes
To fill her life with wonders to be
Which are the dreams we wish for thee.

Lily’s name is a field of flowers
Weaving the colours of beautiful bowers
Havens of peace made secure
By mummy and daddy who make life so sure.

Sure to know, and sure to do
The future, my future is the clue
To forge the dreams of beautiful flowers
Whose powers
Are the symbol of
Loves great tower.

David Applin   11.00pm November 17th 2014

David Applin (Copyright 2015)

Easter Monday (2015)


The silence
It was the silence
As we entered the gates of hell.
Then…
The bird song,
It was the bird song
That chorused our way
To the well
Of tears at the wall
Of many tongues
That speak to the silence still,
Of the voices that cried
For the people who died
The void only time will fill.

The sun
It was the sun
Shining on the wooden cross.
And…
The sky
It was the sky
So blue, and flecked with the floss
Of clouds so white
So pure in light
That the wall of the well of tears
Transfigured the sin
We heap on Him
Whose loss for many
Is the only way
To feel the void time fills.

The woodpecker drummed a beat
On the trunks
Of the trees so parallel still.
A whisper of wind
That rebounds the sound
Of innumerable roll calls
Of the thousands who now
Lie deep in the cradles of mounds
Stone faced, inscribed Toten
With the number interred within
Verboten… now
But why not then?
In that world of men
And women, when humanity’s meaning
Was turned on end.
And a godless creed
That shadowed the world with grief
Which now for many,
Is beyond belief.

The stillness
It was the stillness
That gave silence the space to breathe,
To remember the times, the godless times
That now are so hard to believe.
But silence and stillness envelope the House
A silent place to be
To hear the past that shows the present
The prayers for a future that sees
What could be,
What can be
But will we
Learn, the history from then to now
To forge that future for future’s sake
And answer the question…
How?

David Applin
… late afternoon and evening of Easter Monday 6th April 2015 following a visit to Bergen-Belsen earlier in the day, completed 7th-9th April.

15th April 2015 … 70 years after the liberation of Bergen-Belsen by the British Army.

David Applin (Copyright 2015)

What  is this selection of love so natural

To drive men insane and women to purgatory

Can Mr Darwin explain?

I doubt not , but is the meaning clear

Why love one to one remains so dear.

Karl denied it, Lenin too

And Uncle Joe dismissed it

As a plot to subvert what was good for the proletariat.

But in that recent time when ******’s darkness shadowed
                                                                                                 The Earth

Love glowed in the gloom of the despair of nations’  Terezins

Which to-day helps to repair our broken dreams

Of why we love one to one.


Keats loved one ***** Brawne

And Coleridge his Asra

But what is ecstasy’s advantage?

When comes the pain of separation

Mr Darwin, please explain.

Is it lust, is it reproduction?

But then when love is thwarted

We cannot function,

Where is the advantage

Mr D --- what is the aim, can you explain?

How the coiled spiral passing from time to time

Its immortal message which condemns each generation

To the pain of separation

When the reaper calls, or the rival sunders

The coils of love’s message  we’ve inherited

Since the beginning of time.

Why? What is the advantage?

Mr D, please tell me your answer.


The whales they sing one to one

Like Eliot’s mermaids singing

Not to Prufrock but perhaps to you and me

The message of communication.

Is this love as one to one

Each supports another wounded

By the enormity of the harpoon?

The dictator’s message in another form

Devoid of love, sundered, never whole

Coming from that Terezin we never solve.

Dysfunctional Mr D, where’s the advantage

For such conflicting feelings to evolve?



David Applin (Copyright 2015)

March 2012

What is Life?

Schrodingers thinking
Lingering still
In the recess of Mitchell’s mind.
Where proton pumping
And electron streams
Released the energy
That powered the dreams
Of Crick and Watson’s thinking.
Exculting the coils
That toss and dance
To the chance of whimsical nature.
The random acts of random doings
Not knowing,
Mr Darwin explained
As better the dance
The better the themes
That evolve from primeval electron streams.


What quantum edge has uncertainty given
To Darwin’s original thinking?
Is the particle here
Or is it there
Where starry light, twinkling
Prompts the notion
That the galactic ocean

………………….to be completed

Copyright David Applin May 2015

Guarding the Gate

I said to the Old Man by the gate
Please let me pass to the field beyond
Where flowers lift their blooms to sky
That glimmers the flush of hopeful dawn.

The Old Man paused and said to me
Pass, pass please to your destiny
That comes to all but once this way
Beyond the gate where I stay.

To guard the hopes of those who’ve passed
And those to come
Their hopes, your hopes
Will come to be
Through the gate to eternity.

David Applin
February 2012