of some things
stubbornly persist,
while others
(however devout-
ly we wish
would remain
considerable) gradually
diminish. But
this is just the way
it works with
significance:
there is no trick
on Earth you could pull
to arrange it.
As the known universe
expands, and our quarks
grow stranger,
the physicists
only grow more
and more certain—
the lay public, less
enthusiastic—instead
of the opposite.