Of Chemicals and Constituents…



Factus de materia cinis elementi. – “Created from the material of the ashes of the elements.”



I.) Your 92 elements to construct our natural world, your atoms are of varying radii, weights and personalities.
You are aromas, colors and textures. Molecules.

Hydrogen, hot-blooded, volatile and promiscuous, makes one bond. Carbon, cold, aloof and wary, forms four.

Iron, stern metal unbreakable except from work and weather’s wear.
Oxygen, invisible, holds us together.
O’ solvents, solutions and fumes.

Alchemy, transformed sorcery into science.
You are precious as gold; ordinary.

Who made and arranged you? God, Mendeleev or
Lavoisier puttering about his lab?
Atoms, they split, reform and substitute to find themselves.

You are fuel, our poison, our cure.
Acids, bases, distillations and titrations. Not created or destroyed and
forever conserved.

May we never know surely your endless processes.













What elements are they that Aristotle named “Earth, water, wind and fire”?
That the Chinese added to them wood and metal?
To which theologians added “life”?

What is life but a mixture of air, nutrients and water?
That the Latins called anima?
That the French called vif?

Is it all from a spirit, a soul, an earthly body or a brilliant mind?
Most importantly, does it think or does it sing?

Why do the great laws of conservation of matter and of energy
not apply to a man’s lifetime nor his body?
Truly, his bones are rented. His blood borrowed from iron in the dirt.

He seeks transmutation: transforming a foul thing into one that is glorious, but reaches it not.
Truly, gold dug from the grey earth still shines like the dawn and silk spun from a worm’s bottom is firm.

They become poisons, salts and herbs.
From wood comes fire; from a fire greatly-hot come glass vessels, from shriveled
fruit comes wine that lifts men’s’ spirits. From the cold rocks precious staffs are made- and swords.

Who did the elements assemble from clamor and could men tear them asunder or possibly make things anew?
Man took his ideas of power and purity and fashioned the Philosopher’s Stone. Formed of salt, which is earthly wisdom, lead which is earthy flesh and mercury that represents mystery.

Even as the stone transformed all it touched into pure gold; it could not make water into wine - nor wine into blood.
It could not make a criminal innocent, a man a child or a harlot virgin again.

Man threw away the stone, since it could not perfect. All who drew from the gold produced thereof, died in grief.
Amongst all alchemists was the formula lost. Beggars and noblemen would seek after it but not find.

Later, the elements found in our world summed to 92.
They were metals, liquids and airs.
Those necessary for life were called “Hydrogen, oxygen, carbon and nitrogen.”

They found the earth to be made of many things, water but two of these,
Fire was pure energy and wind a light mixture.
All matter had a name and could tear apart.

Still the afterlife eludes us. Consumed with our hands, our spirit is forgotten, lying
in the earth beside that long-gone formula for transformation.

We seek stones, herbs and formulae, which lead to immortality
but as in the past, find only false gold and greed.

Men now desert their spirit to think- and to sing.
Their laws disharmonious to matter: not creating, conserving too much
or not conserving at all.

Cherishing the will of the earthly body and not the silent song within,
we guard our gold from days past and wish not to create.
The life starves, yet as we search our bodies, our minds and even the street-corners for that stone, that sweet elixir.

Because we seek our minds and bodies and no power outside the self,
we seek forever; the ends of the earth and amongst the elements
-and shall never find.