Travels with Einstein

I wrote "Travels with Einstein" before Trump was elected president and proved me a prophet...

A question that sometimes drives me hazy:
am I or the others crazy?
—Albert Einstein, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I wrote “Travels with Einstein” while working as a peace activist in 2012, then dedicated the poem to Trump after he proved me a prophet.

Excerpts from “Travels with Einstein”
by Michael R. Burch

for Trump

I went to Berlin to learn wisdom
from Adolph. The wild spittle flew
as he screamed at me, with great conviction:
“Please despise me! I look like a Jew!”

So I flew off to ’Nam to learn wisdom
from tall Yankees who cursed “yellow” foes.
“If we lose this small square,” they informed me,
earth’s nations will fall, dominoes!”

I then sat at Christ’s feet to learn wisdom,
but his Book, from its genesis to close,
said: “Men can enslave their own brothers!”
(I soon noticed he lacked any clothes.)

So I traveled to bright Tel Aviv
where great scholars with lofty IQs
informed me that (since I’m an Arab)
I’m unfit to lick dirt from their shoes.

At last, done with learning, I stumbled
to a well where the waters seemed sweet:
the mirage of American “justice.”
There I wept a real sea, in defeat.

Originally published by Café Dissensus

Albert Einstein was a humanist and pacifist who strongly opposed racism and nationalism. Einstein called nationalism the “infantile disease” of mankind, so we can imagine what he would have said about Trump and his ilk.

But on a lighter note, I have written some humorous limericks about Einstein’s theory that mass increases as one approaches the speed of light …

The Cosmological Constant
by Michael R. Burch

Einstein, the frizzy-haired,
said E equals MC squared.
Thus all mass decreases
as activity ceases?
Not my mass, my ass declared!

Ass-tronomical
by Michael R. Burch

Relativity, the theorists’ creed,
says mass increases with speed.
My (m)ass grows when I sit it.
Mr. Einstein, get with it;
equate its deflation, I plead!

Relative to Whom?
by Michael R. Burch

Einstein’s theory, incredibly silly,
says a relative grows willy-nilly
at speeds close to light.
Well, his relatives might,
but mine grow their (m)asses more stilly!

I have also taken the liberty of turning quotations by Albert Einstein into poems …

Was Albert Einstein a poet? Was Einstein, perhaps, a major poet who remains better known for other, far less significant things―small things such as discovering the relativistic nature of time and space? Of course I’m teasing, but I will make the case that Albert Einstein was not only a poet, but a very romantic poet!

Einstein was undoubtedly a poet, in my opinion. His poetry is merely another aspect of his genius. The following poems are comprised of quotations by Einstein that I combined into poems, changing a word here and there for the sake of meter and rhyme, while hopefully preserving the reason.

Relativity and the “Physics” of Love
—Albert Einstein, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Sit next to a pretty girl for an hour,
it seems like a minute.
Sit on a red-hot stove for a minute,
it seems like an hour.
That’s relativity!

Oh, it should be possible
to explain the laws of physics
to a barmaid! . . .
but how could she ever,
in a million years,
explain love to an Einstein?

All these primary impulses,
not easily described in words,
are the springboards
of man’s actions—because
any man who can drive safely
while kissing a pretty girl
is simply not giving the kiss
the attention it deserves!

Solitude
—Albert Einstein, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Solitude is painful
when one is young,
but delightful
when one is more mature.
I live in that solitude
which was painful in my youth,
but seems delicious now,
in the years of my maturity.

Now it gives me great pleasure, indeed,
to see the stubbornness
of an incorrigible nonconformist
so warmly acclaimed . . .
and yet it seems vastly strange
to be known so universally
and yet be so lonely.

Morality
—Albert Einstein, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Still, as far as I’m concerned,
I prefer silent vice
to ostentatious virtue:
I don’t know,
I don’t care,
and it doesn’t make any difference!