The physicist and the theologian

Today a black hole swallowed Stephen Hawking.
By quark of fate or faith, infinity
Ago, I stood a Cambridge student gawking
As he rolled past me into Trinity.
Eternal verities awaited me
Across St. John’s Street where my grad advisor
Dispensed divine research advice; whilst he,
The famous physicist, a quantum wiser,
Nudged joystick left, chose Newton over Knox;
What cosmic irony for us to place
His ashes in a dark Westminster box
Instead of shooting them out into space.
          Both then and now, in time’s Brief History,
          I watched him pass into God’s mystery.