Carlos Castaneda ; The Active Side of Infinity
Syntax
A man staring at his equations
said that the universe had a beginning
There had been an explosion, he said.
A bang of bangs, and the universe was born.
And it is expanding, he said.
He even calculated the length of its life:
ten billion revolutions of the earth around the
sun.
The entire globe cheered;
They found his calculations to be science.
None thought that by proposing that the universe
began,
the man merely mirrored the syntax of his mother
tongue;
a syntax which demands beginnings, like birth,
and developments, like maturation,
and ends,like death, as statements of facts.
The universe began,
and it is getting old, the man assured us,
and it willdie, like all things die,
like he himself died after confirming
mathematically
the syntax of his mother tongue.