Atomic Weight 12. 011
All that is black or white or transparent,
hard or soft, sooty or gleaming, all that
we use to solder, shine, heat and write —
that all of it should be one and the same,
able to enter into 10 (to the power 6) different marriages,
form honeycombs, lattices, chains, rings, tangles,
cords and screws, and that what we breathe is
what we fly with is what we can suffocate on,
and that nothing alive lives without it —
no one except those who want to know all
would have hit upon it, and what we,
who now know it, should do with it —
we do not know.
translated by Esther Kinsky
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A History of Clouds
Hans Magnus Enzensberger
Seagull Books
