Alhazen of Basra
If I could travel
a thousand years back
to August 1004,
to a small tent
where Alhazen
has fallen asleep among books
about sunsets,
shadows,
and light itself,
I wouldn't ask whether light travels
in a straight line,
or what governs
the laws of refraction,
or how
he discovered the bridgework
of analytical geometry;
I would ask about
the light within us,
what shines in the mind's
great repository
of dream,
and whether he's studied
the deep shadows
daylight brings,
how light defines us.
Brian Turner
1 comment:
Great little poem, Brian. It asks an interesting question. As you know, Ibn al-Haytham solved the mystery of vision, accurately identifying light as the source of vision. He explained that vision occurs not in the eye, but in the brain. This insight gave rise to what is now known as the psychology of vision. This breakthrough is at least akin to the question the poem poses. The author of the author of Ibn al-Haytham: First Scientist, the world's first biography of the eleventh-century Muslim scholar known in the West as Alhazen or Alhacen, I believe that this amazing man would have appreciated your question and had much to say about it.
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