Jean Hans Arp: The Plain

I was alone with a chair on a plain
Which lost itself in an empty horizon. 

The plain was flawlessly paved. 
Nothing, absolutely nothing but the chair and I
were there. 

The sky was forever blue, 
No sun gave life to it. 

An inscrutable, insensible light
illuminated the infinite plain. 

To me this eternal day seemed to be projected -- 
artificially-- from a different sphere. 

I was never sleepy nor hungry nor thirsty, 
never hot nor cold. 

Time was only an abstruse ghost
since nothing happened or changed. 

In me Time still lived a little
This, mainly, thanks to the chair. 

Because of my occupation with it
I did not completely
lose my sense of the past. 

Now and then I'd hitch myself, as if I were a horse, to the chair
and trot around with it, 
sometimes in circles, 
and sometimes straight ahead. 

I assume that I succeeded. 

Whether I really succeeded I do not know
Since there was nothing in space
By which I could have checked my movements. 

As I sat on the chair I pondered sadly, but not desperately, 
Why the core of the world exuded such black light. 

 

Jean Hans Arp was an artist - painter, sculptor and poet.  Looking at his work over the years, I had a hunch that he thought about physics, though couldn't find any formal mention of it.  Then, I found this poem where he considers time when nothing happens and 'movement'  through space when there is no fixed reference point.